Category Archives: Personal and Professional Development

All posts related to coaching.

Stay in Your Own Lane

It happened again today.  There is this young woman that comes to my spin classes on occasion.  She seems very nice.  Everyone, including the instructors, seem to know and like her.  However, she seems to be interested in everything except exercising. She usually comes in 15-20 minutes late for a 45 minute class, loaded down with all manner of bags and water bottles. She is always dressed in high quality, matching workout outfits (unlike me, who is always dressed in whichever t-shirt and leggings have made it to the top of “the rotation” that day).  Like me, she seems to prefer bikes in the front row, right in front of the instructor, which usually are the last taken. As such, she is often next to me or in my line of sight. She drops her belongings, takes her time setting her bike and getting on, then spends the next few minutes updating her chats on text before settling her phone on the shelf between the handle bars. I have never seen this woman break a sweat. I have never seen her even breathe hard. She occasionally follows the instructor’s directions, but usually does her own thing and spends more time texting than anything else. 

This bugs the crap out of me! Here I am, sweating away, pushing as hard as I can and watching her do anything but workout. As I find myself getting more and more agitated about her, the self-talk begins. “What do you care, Sherri? The quality of your workout has nothing to do with whatever she does. Stay in your own lane.” The Y is a very chill place. As long as she’s not hurting herself or someone else, whatever she chooses to do should not affect my workout. But it bugs me.

We seem to have a bit of an epidemic these days of people telling other people how to live their lives, what to think, how to feel.  It’s nothing new, honestly.  I am old enough to have watched the TV show “All in the Family” growing up.  That show would never fly today because people would immediately clutch their pearls and hyperventilate over all the bigoted/racist/antisemitic/generally intolerant things Archie would say and yet completely miss the loving and inclusive message that the episode was ultimately sending.  Anyway, one of my favorite clips from the show perfectly illustrates the point I want to make in this essay.  Gift yourself the three minutes and watch it here.  The gist of the skit is that Archie and Michael/Meathead are late to get to a fishing expedition and Meathead has to hurry to get dressed.  Archie goes nuts when Meathead puts on a sock and shoe before going on to the other foot.  A spirited debate ensues about the “right” way to put on socks and shoes.  Meathead is a sock/shoe adherent; Archie is a sock/sock/shoe/shoe guy.  Throughout the skit, they both bring up “convincing” arguments about why their way is the right way, or at least better.  What makes the skit funny is that we all know there isn’t a “right” way.  There is just a preferred way.  (For the record, I’m generally a sock/shoe kind of girl.)

I think it’s generally human nature to want everyone to make the same choices you make, exhibit the same behaviors you exhibit, go through life exactly as you choose to go through life.  When I write it down like that, it sounds ridiculous.  But you know you do it, too!  We like our own choices and preferences so, by definition, they must be the best, right?  Can’t everyone see that?

Just as obviously, we all know that isn’t true.  A small businessman I know once said something to the effect that “only losers work for large corporations.  If you want to have a real career, you should run your own business.”   My first reaction was to feel inferior as someone who spent her whole career inside multibillion dollar corporations.  But about two milliseconds later, I realized how ridiculous that reaction was!  First of all, I am so NOT an entrepreneur.  I don’t have the ideas, nor the courage, nor the persistence to make a go of starting up my own business.  However, I worked really well (ok, reasonably well) inside large corporations.  That environment fit me well.  And last I checked, we actually DO need large corporations for a lot of what makes life possible.  We also need a ton of small businesses.  YOUR choice does not need to be EVERYONE’S choice.  In fact, it would be a negative if everyone made the same choices.  If we all know this to be true, why are we so judgy about other people’s choices?

I barely understand why I do it myself, so I’ll focus there.  One reason is righteousness combined with insecurity.  To continue with our spin class analogy, while I feel I work hard, I see many others around me (usually a lot younger) who spin faster and at higher gears.  The best way to deal with my own insecurity about not working hard enough is to beat up on someone working out less hard than I do.  Another reason, honestly, is ignorance.  I have lived a wonderful life so far, but my experiences are pretty narrow considering the huge breadth in life experiences out there.  I judge others through the prism of my own experience, forgetting my own motto about being careful about assumptions.  Maybe that woman has been dealing with a physical or mental challenge that makes it a huge achievement to simply get herself to the Y and get to a class.  Maybe she’s working her way back to health, a condition that I take for granted.  And even if she is just a lazy worker outer, who cares?  Her choices do not affect me unless I choose to get bugged by them.

The difficulty here is that sometimes the choices others make DO affect your life.  To use the opposite meaning of “stay in your own lane,” if someone literally does not stay in their own lane while driving, people can get hurt.  Rules of the road exist for a reason.  Same with Standard Operating Procedures at a chemical plant or check lists that pilots go through before takeoff.  Those examples are important but let’s not kid ourselves:  those instances are rare and focused.  Most of the vitriol that I see in the news these days is intolerance of different ideas.  It can be really hard to admit to yourself that you are merely hiding behind faux moral outrage when it’s just your own discomfort or lack of exposure to something different.  I try really hard to take a deep breath and not force the world to run according to my preferences.  It’s not easy nor am I always successful.  Learning trust and humility and not centering the world on yourself takes effort.  I do, of course, have more thoughts on this.  In the meantime, though, just try to stay in your own lane.

Refrigerator Rights

My last essay on long time friends sparked a lot of discussion, mostly in our home. Trish and I had some long discussions on friendships. I found it very illuminating because she has approached friendships very differently from me over the years and I find myself benefiting immensely from her perspective. Ruminating on these ideas, I kept finding myself coming back to a certain type of relationship. Since the thoughts won’t leave me, I must write them down to make room for more random thoughts. So, you now get to hear me pontificate on Refrigerator Rights.

A person is granted Refrigerator Rights only within certain relationships. RR, as we will now call them since I don’t feel like typing “Refrigerator Rights” over and over, exist when you are comfortable enough with someone that you can just go help yourself to whatever you want from the frig. You don’t need to ask. You don’t need to wait to be offered. You are not just ALLOWED to get whatever you want, you are EXPECTED to go get whatever you want. “I’m not serving you. Get it yourself.”

My earliest memories of RR are related to my neighborhood friends. When I was a kid growing up in the 1960’s and ‘70s, I would just leave the house and “go play”. Sometimes it was with the kid next door. Sometimes the kid across the street. Sometimes a few kids up the hill. We just went out and came back when we felt like it or were expected to be home. As far as I remember, there was no planning by our parents. In fact, I don’t really remember planning between us kids. There was just a knock on the door and off we went. I had RR at each of these houses. The moms were too busy to serve us and we were expected to just help ourselves. Being the consummate rule follower, I only helped myself to what I knew I was allowed to have. I’m sure there was ample opportunity to get in trouble and plenty of kids did. That was just not me (at least until I went away to college). I took RR for granted back then. It just was what you did.

As an adult, RR took on new meaning. I certainly always had RR with my immediate family and I have it now with my in-laws. But I learned that being granted RR by friends was a significant milestone in the evolution of our friendship. In fact, the whole concept of RR had to explained to me by a friend one day when she got tired of the charades I would play around wanting something to drink. Too nervous to ask, I would mime thirst or some such desire. Trish calls this “passive aggressive behavior.” I call it “deep seated insecurity.” Trish will just wrinkle her nose and say, “I don’t care about the source of the behavior, just the behavior itself.” Have I noted how good this relationship has been for me?

Anyway, reaching the point of RR in a friendship is an expression of trust. It’s evidence that you have moved into one of the inner concentric circles of the relationship model. It means there is an understood level of comfort between you and the owner of said refrigerator. Some people are very relaxed and grant RR right away. I envy admire those people. They are people who are easy to get to know because they have no fear. They can be an open book because they don’t fear rejection. “You don’t like me because of this one thing? Fine. Just go help yourself to a drink.” They do not fear getting taken advantage of because they are good at setting boundaries. “Go get a snack out of that cupboard, but don’t eat the last cookie or I will throw you out.” (OK, so that one was Trish the first time I ever came to her house.) They are very comfortable in their skin and don’t concern themselves with other people’s tendency to judge. They might feel badly that there is not something you like in the fridge because they want to be a good host, but they don’t see it as an existential failing on their part.

You can probably see where I’m going with this. Making new friends has always been a bit difficult for me. That’s probably going to be my next essay since it should flow nicely from this one. Not to spoil the plot (especially since my long time readers already know this about me), but I’m always afraid of “not knowing what I don’t know” about people’s opinions of me. I try to not assume too much, even when people show me extraordinary kindness. It makes me come off as a bit aloof, I know, but I’m really just protecting myself. To counter that, I’m trying hard to develop a willingness to grant RR, both literally and in the abstract, more readily. It will still take me a while to let go of the paranoia but, as they say, you gotta fake it until you make it.

If you grant me Refrigerator Rights, know that I don’t take that lightly. I will assume you granting me RR means that you feel comfortable with me, trust me, and want me to feel the same about you. (But if you have Diet Dr. Pepper or Diet Cream Soda in there that you don’t want touched you had better tell me!) I will see it as a vote of confidence in our friendship and a willingness to get to know each other even better over time. Building lasting relationships is all about a foundation of trust, anyway. So, go help yourself to whatever you’d like! Just not the last cookie.

“Y” is for Yesterday

Can you believe that we are at the penultimate essay of our year-long Abecedarium?  This process has been a blast.  I admit that I have mostly forced a title starting with the appropriate letter of the alphabet based upon whatever was streaming through my head at the time.  However, that has made me appraise my ponderings more deeply, as well as more frequently, between essays.  I hope you have enjoyed this journey as much as I have.  These last couple of weeks, I’ve been ruminating on Yesterdays.

This past week I had an MRI (annual screening test).  The scan takes about a half hour, so while I’m lying prone on the sled inside that tube listening to the banging of whatever bangs inside the MRI, I have a lot of time to think.  And I often think about my mortality.  This year, I asked them to play ‘70s music.  So, in addition to thinking about my life looking forward, with the music of my youth blaring in my ears I was also thinking about the years past.

I’ve noted often that I have struggled my entire adult life with living in the present.  Listening to those songs from my youth, I marveled at how easily I lived in the moment back then.  Those songs made me think of warm spring days, lying on the pole vault mats after track practice listening to music and talking.  They made me think of long summer days, which I mostly spent in the high school gym working on my jump shot.  They made me think of the first day of school in the fall, full of hope and anxiety.  And everyone always looked so different when we came back together to start the school year!  Time passed slowly back then.  Four years in high school felt like an eternity.  Four years in college went by so much faster.  Four years in grad school passed so quickly!  Well, individual days seemed slow, but the entire process seemed fast.  Now, four years of just “life” passes in the blink of an eye.  I want it to slow down.  I want to savor each day more because I appreciate each day more now.

Earlier this month, my bestie had a milestone birthday and a few of us jetted off to New Orleans to celebrate.  At one point, I started giving her some good natured grief about getting older.  Asking her how she felt about this birthday, she didn’t miss a beat.  She said, “It’s a privilege.”  I absolutely loved that response.  She’s right.  Many people don’t get the privilege of reaching our age.  When I was in my 20s and 30s, “60” seemed really old.  With life expectancies at that time barely in the 70s, I guess that thinking wasn’t too far off the mark.  It also seemed very far away for me.  I barely gave a thought to what my life might be like in my 60s or what I should be doing in my 20s and 30s to prepare for that stage in my life.  (Except for saving money.  Thank you, Mom and Dad, for teaching me basic fiscal literacy!)  My thoughts were filled with building my career, building my social life, always focused on “getting through” the current stressor.  It wasn’t until I retired that I started realizing that what came next was less important than living fully today.

I don’t, of course, live mindfully every day.  I have my routines.  There is the class-of-the-day at the Y.  All the daily challenges on my iPad games.  All the email newsletters that need to be read.  Then it’s lunchtime already.  Then I go into a food coma and read more or play more games.  Maybe there is an errand or two.  Maybe a phone call or two.  Before I know it, it’s time for my daily check in with Mom and then time to make dinner. 

Every year, as we move into the latter half of December, media outlets start looking back over the past twelve months to remind us of the good, the bad, and the ugly.  What always strikes me are the lists of famous people who have passed over the year.  That list used to be populated by people with whom I mostly had a passing awareness.  Now those lists include a number of my contemporaries, or those not much older but who have been fixtures in my life.

To emphasize this feeling of mortality, I found out I lost a friend earlier this week.  Not a close friend, just someone in whose orbit I circulated for a few years and someone I respected immensely.  I ruined that friendship through a hurtful selfish act.  I owned up to it; apologized; did not make excuses nor throw anyone else under the bus.  She graciously heard me out.  I determined the best way I could respect her was by exiting her orbit.  Most definitely my loss.  The indiscretions of youth have a cost.  I have worked to learn from that experience by, first, trying not to make stupid selfish decisions.  Since no human is capable of avoiding that completely, I then work to own my actions.  There is a reason personal accountability is a hot button for me.  Since I have embraced the pain and embarrassment of owning my actions and words, I expect the same from others.  Unfortunately, taking ownership does not grant you forgiveness.  That’s up to the other party.  But part of living mindfully is doing the right thing because it’s the right thing—not to get a certain outcome.

I am not breaking new philosophical ground with these thoughts.  We all know we need to slow down and live with more intention.  This time of year, we get lots of reminders of that, which is something I appreciate.  Simultaneously looking forward and backward has the paradoxical effect of helping me live in the present.  Life can change in an instant, as I also was reminded this week.  A relative on Trish’s side had a bad accident at work.  He is badly hurt and we are praying for his recovery.  As of this writing, we still do not know the full extent of his injuries, nor his long term prognosis.  I am doing what I do:  cooking for his family.  One instant, one phone call and your life changes.  We don’t think about that all the time because we’d be paralyzed with anxiety if we did.  It’s a good idea to think about it every now and then, though.  It reminds us to live mindfully; to treat people with kindness; to own your issues; to forgive others theirs.  I didn’t know any of this in those long ago yesterdays.  I just lived each day as it came.  Now, as Beth says, I know each day is a privilege.  I don’t want to forget that.

“X” is for Xena

For years now I’ve been wanting to pen an essay entitled “Everything I Need to Know in Life I Learned from Xena: Warrior Princess.”  This Abecedarium has finally given me my chance!

“Xena: Warrior Princess” is a TV show that aired for seven years, spanning the late 1990’s into the early 2000’s.  It followed the exploits and adventures of a warrior woman and her trusty “sidekick” Gabrielle as they fought injustice, Greek Gods, and an anachronistic list of historical figures (she fought both Julius Ceasar and Alexander the Great, among many others).  The show aired at a pivotal time in my life and became an important touchstone for me.  It began shortly after I got dumped from a relationship and found myself living alone for the first time since grad school.  It aired from the transition to my expat assignment in Mexico all the way through my transition back to the US.  At a time when my life seemed upended in almost every way imaginable, it was a constant.  And, thanks to email listserves in those early years of the commercial internet, provided a community that I could take with me from place to place.

The show, which on the surface seemed really cheesy, was brilliantly written and quickly became a cult success.  I happened upon it by accident (it ran on a second tier network) and was hooked immediately.  There was strong lesbian subtext between Xena and Gabrielle at a time when there were vanishingly few positive gay roles on TV, and the writers played that up as they realized the show caught on quickly with the gay community.  But more than that, Xena was a deeply developed character with conflicting strengths and flaws who served up a number of life lessons.  Herewith, what Xena has taught me:

Stay focused on winning the war, not each and every battle.  Xena always had clarity on her goals and recognized when she needed to walk away from one battle to be able to win the war.  She did have an uncanny way of being able to clean up those loose ends by the end of each episode, but the point was that you had to stay focused on the bigger goal.  Many of us have the tendency to want to win every single battle we are faced with and end up expending so much energy that we never achieve the big goals we were really after.  This is important in your work life as well as relationships.  We’ve all heard the maxim “Pick your battles.”  Xena knew which ones were important.

Never, ever, lose your moral compass.  Xena didn’t just keep in mind what the bigger goals were, she also stayed loyal to WHY those were the bigger goals.  It may have seemed like she was selling out her morals at times, but she knew what she was doing and always came back to the “right” side.  It is easy in life to be seduced into compromising your principles to achieve a goal that you think is important.  Often, though, the money or the job or the “prize” was never as satisfying as you thought—or the brightness was dimmed by what you gave up to achieve it.  Deep down, WHO we are is much more important than WHAT we have accomplished.  Some people have stuffed that realization down so deeply that they never reconcile their actions with their negative impact.  Most of us do have that better angel on our shoulder, though.   Listen to it.

When you have that clarity of purpose, don’t give up.  Time and time again, it would seem like Xena was defeated yet she’d find some way to prevail.  Once she knew what she had to do, she was unstoppable.  I will admit to not having that degree of intestinal fortitude.  I have rarely been able to attain that kind of clarity.  I have always harbored too much doubt.  That’s why I could never be a successful entrepreneur.  I need too much validation and support to be able to persist in front of a mountain of obstacles.  However, I have learned to persist in small ways, and it always comes back to reminding myself what is truly important.

Stay loyal to those who stay loyal to you.  This may sound like a mob creed (and maybe it is), but you know who you truly love and care about and who returns that commitment to you.  Keep those people close and do whatever you have to do to support them.  These are, in turn, the people you can count on.  Certainly, Xena would do anything to get Gabrielle out of jam, but she also put herself on the line more than once to get Joxer out of trouble.  He was the annoying comedic foil in the show but he had a heart of gold and Xena knew it.  The people you need to pay attention to in your life are not always the loudest and most insistent.  Often, they are the quietest and most unassuming.  Treasure and protect them.

Don’t take yourself too seriously.  My favorite episodes are mostly the funny ones.  By your comments, it seems your favorite essays of mine are usually the lighthearted ones!  We all like to laugh and find the humor in daily life.  That doesn’t mean that you can’t learn important lessons at the same time.  We are all works in progress and full of contradictions.  That’s what makes us human.  Learning to look at ourselves clearly and find the humor in our flaws is a form of grace and a way to learn to love yourself for just who you are.  It’s also the best way to learn to love those around us for just who THEY are.  No one is flawless.  Learn to laugh at those imperfections while you work to change the ones in yourself, and mitigate the impact of those you don’t.

In the end, Xena and Gabrielle did not sail off into the sunset together.  Initially, I was pissed, as was most of the broader fan community.  Over time, I saw that it was the most fitting ending to the series and consistent with the character the writers had built.  Xena sacrificed herself for the greater good, even though she had the chance to come back from the dead and be with Gabrielle.  (She had reanimated several times during the series.)  She stayed true to her moral compass until the very end and that’s a goal we should all embrace.

“W” is for Welcoming

We are on the home stretch of our year-long Abecedarium, patient readers!  I must admit, I’m a bit amazed at how I’ve been able to pull this off thus far.  I was a bit worried about letters, like Q and V, that seem to have limited use, but finding words to support a theme has been surprisingly easy.  In fact, most of the time I am noodling over several words that start with the letter of the day.  Bring it on, X, Y, and Z!

Finding the right word that begins with W has been an interesting challenge over these last two weeks.  I began pondering about the power of Words in general and Writing in particular, but that’s not the theme.  (I have a feeling that will drive my essay on my five-year blog-iversary, which we’ll reach right after this Abecedarium is complete.)  Nor is Wisdom, although I always try to sprinkle in a little bit about that as well.  No, today’s essay is going to focus on thoughts around Welcoming.

Part of what had me thinking about this theme is the on-going journey of socializing our new kitten, Baxter, with his reluctant older “sister” Bridget.  We’ve had Baxter almost a month now, and we’ve come a long way.  The day we brought him home, Bridget reacted with a “What fresh hell is THIS?!” look followed by a hiss and growl and running away.  Baxter, for his part, dove under a couch, not to be seen again for 12 hours.  I, of course, had had visions of Bridget falling in love with this adorable little kitten, letting her maternal instincts allow her to welcome him.  Instead, she has reacted to every stage of this socialization process with confusion/anger/standoffishness complete with strange growls that should not come out of any earthly creature and bared teeth that give me nightmares.  Little by little, her stance has softened.  She has begun to come running (well, slinking) to play along with Baxter with the feather-on-a-stick toy that she’s ignored up until now.  Bridget has consented to being in the same room with him, including somewhat relaxing on one lap while Baxter does the same on another.  (This is why you never should have more pets than available laps.)  Then, this morning, there was an amazing breakthrough.

We have discussed Bridget’s deep-seated food insecurity issues before.  Because of this, I have been really careful around feeding time.  I was afraid that if Baxter dared to come over to her food bowl that she would rip him to shreds.  He, of course, snuck over to her bowl and dug into her food, which apparently tastes way better than kitten food.  So, over the last couple of days, he has steadfastly REFUSED to eat his canned kitten food.  (I, as the paranoid hypochondriac, immediately decided that there is something fatally wrong with him.)  This morning, he again refused to eat his food and before I could react (I hadn’t had any coffee yet), he went over and stuck his head into her bowl WHILE SHE WAS EATING.  My heart caught in my throat, waiting for the attack.  But she LET him!  She actually backed away and let him eat her food.  No growl nor hiss.  I was stunned.  In her own way, she HAS accepted him and, in fact, I think she understands that he’s a kitten and needs to eat.  Her hissing and growling had clearly become just performative and that act clinched it.  She has finally welcomed him, although I expect her to continue to play the annoyed big sister for a while.  She does have an image to maintain after all.

I have also been thinking about Welcoming in the context of putting oneself in a new social situation.  My Mom made the decision last February to move to a different senior living facility.  She knew no one at this new place and even with a newcomer “buddy system,” she was often left to fend for herself at meal times.  Do you remember the stress of the cafeteria in grade school or high school?  It’s not a whole lot different as adults.  I am so proud of how my Mom handled this situation!  She opened herself up to the kind of rejection and discomfort we all dread, irrespective of how uncomfortable she herself was in the situation.  Over the months, she has developed a circle of friends and tells me stories regularly of how she welcomes new people who are looking for a place to sit.  People were kind and welcoming to her; she has been paying it forward.  

With everything going on in Israel these days, I have felt myself pulled back to more active participation in Judaism—particularly the need for a Jewish community.  The activation barrier, though, to attending a new shul for the first time has been prohibitive.  Religious institutions can be clic-y places and finding one in which you feel comfortable can be a difficult trial-and-error.  I had pushed through the discomfort when I lived in the Lehigh Valley and found a wonderful home at Temple Beth El.  I needed to push through that discomfort again, here. 

Trish went with me to Friday night services at Temple Sinai a couple of weeks ago.  The attendance on Friday nights is generally lower than Saturday morning and I paradoxically find that easier.  Trish, of course, made friends quickly and easily with the people there.  It’s one of the aspects of her personality that I admire most.  She is an easy conversationalist whereas I am not.  She connects with people extraordinarily well.  Yesterday, I went alone to Shabbat morning services.  A few of the people we had met before were there and recognized me.  (Of course, they asked where Trish was and looked a bit disappointed that she wasn’t with me.  I tried not to take it personally.)  Striking up new conversations is hard for me.  It was always a struggle at work events, too.  Once I got to know people, conversation would flow more easily but those first encounters were difficult.  However, this first time went well enough that I’m encouraged to go back again and work at recreating the community that I miss so much.

This was also a lesson to me on the importance of being welcoming myself.  The essence of being welcoming is being non-judgmental and “people curious”.  Bonnie and Mike made me feel part of the Temple Sinai community right away.  Cheryl patiently asked me questions about myself during the Kiddush and shared a lot about herself even though I was too uncomfortable to ask good questions of her.  Everyone knew I was “new” and they were kind.  I have a hard time being welcoming to others because I have a hard time striking up conversation with people I don’t know.  (Well, even with people I DO know.  Writing is not really a problem.  Talking can be.)  I am trying to embody some of the lessons I’ve written about and the best way to do that is to remember what it’s like to be on the receiving end of needing to be “seen”.  These days, with all the division and dehumanizing going on in our polarized society, making the effort to be welcoming and seeing those around you as unique humans is more important than ever.  This week was another good reminder of that for me.

“U” is for Uncharted

This essay is posting a few days late for a number of reasons.  First, my editor has a head cold and I refuse to put a piece of writing in front of her when she can’t edit clearly (or fairly).  Yes, that is a lame excuse.  Second, we had house guests this weekend, which is when I usually write polish my essays.  This is also a lame excuse since I could have written during the week or after they left midday Sunday.  So, the REAL reason this essay is late is that I’ve just felt very “un” lately.  Unsettled.  Unmoored.  Out of my routine.  Not in control.  Then I watched a TV show that titled that particular episode Uncharted and I knew I had my title.  I felt like I’ve been navigating uncharted waters, as it were.  And I just couldn’t write.  I’ll admit that I’m only marginally comfortable with this essay as it is.  I’ve just been all over the place.

I’m sure you got a hint of the disruption I was navigating in the previous essay entitled Time.  Let me tell you what else was wrapped around losing our beloved Beau.  First, I had traveled to Atlanta for my Dad’s yahrzeit (the anniversary of his passing).  I do not travel “well” anymore so that trip alone left me out of sorts.  My sister came back with me for a visit and we all had to deal with our trauma over Beau’s illness and decision to let him go.  Then we drove to Rhode Island for the family wedding that was beautiful and joyous and exhausting.  (We don’t handle six hour drives like we used to, either.)  After that emotionally draining visit (I hope Wendy will come back), my sister went home on Tuesday and I promptly came down with a wicked head cold.  Trish nursed me for the next, oh, five days (which basically involves getting me won ton soup, listening to me complain, and generally leaving me alone).  For good measure, I bit my tongue, so I had a huge painful ulcer, AND badly burned the roof of my mouth on hot soup.  I was a pleasure. Our house guests came the following weekend and we had a blast!  We hosted a Happy Hour on Friday that included two of Trish’s siblings and their spouses; we ate and drank and watched football and baseball with our friends; and, had a final group brunch on Sunday before they headed home.  As they drove away, Trish surrendered to the head cold and here we are.  It has been several weeks of ups and downs to the extreme.  I have emotional whiplash that has left me both drained and disoriented.

What I’m also struggling mightily with right now is Hamas’ indiscriminate, brutal, violent slaying of over 1400 Israelis.  I will say right up front that I am not balanced on this one.  No, I do not revel in the fate of civilians caught up in this mess and I will not defend every single action of Israel but nothing can compare to the brutality of those murders.  This is not a new conflict, of course.  If you want a good primer on the history of conquest of the land we call Israel, read Michener’s The Source.  But you don’t need a historical novel to know that Jews have been hated and hunted for millennia.  As a Jew, I have been educated since I was a young child on one very sad fact:  every few generations, Jews face an existential threat.  It’s happened like clockwork for thousands of years.  Those old enough to have experienced the horrors of the Holocaust, or who have direct connection to those who did, know this well.  Those young enough to be removed from that history see only what fits into their current experience.  But these are still uncharted waters.  Things are different this time.  We have real time information, much of it highly graphic, that shows the inhumanity of war.  We are also subject to enormous amounts of mis- and disinformation.  The weapons available are frightening and the ability to coordinate across different factions could lead to devastating outcomes.  I don’t know what is going to happen.  This very much feels like an existential crisis for Israel and I’m frightened.  This is all keeping me off balance.

Over the course of pontificating in these essays over the last almost five years, I’ve waxed philosophical about my ability to finally live in the present.  I apparently was a little too proud of that, because reality smacked me in the face over the last few weeks.  I was right back to living for the next opportunity to exhale, just like I had almost my entire adult life.  I couldn’t control what was happening around me and I had precious little ability (Strength? Focus? Desire?) to control my own reactions and outlook.  I stopped working out.  I stopped writing.  I stopped meditating.  I feel like I stopped breathing.  It was a humbling reminder that it’s easy to talk about calmly living in the present when everything is going smoothly yet a different exercise all together when you are lurching from one unexpected blow to another.

As I was thinking about this essay, I kept coming back to this theme of being in uncharted waters.  Mostly, that concept carries negative connotations—thoughts of dangers known and unknown; thoughts of lack of control; fears of what might happen next.  It got me thinking about my work years, particularly the last decade, which was one long uncharted journey.  When I started my career, I thought the world was run by competent, mature people and I found that intimidating.  As I gained experience, I realized that the world was run by people just like me, and I got scared!  Did I have the mental clarity to lead well?  Now, I realize that the world is run by people generally less capable than I am and it just pisses me off.

Like most people, I learned to develop mental and emotional shortcuts to navigate stressors:  a situation would arise that had elements that were familiar to me and I would apply a solution that had worked in the past.  Sometimes this worked brilliantly; sometimes it failed spectacularly.  Over time, I realized that while shortcuts had their value, EVERY situation is unique.  The trick, when you have a shortcut you want to apply, is to ask yourself, “What is different this time?”  I will admit that I did not embrace this thinking until very late in my career.  In fact, I believe it is what got me fired since the people above me did not want to think about what might be different.  They just wanted to do the same thing they’d done in the past and assume the same outcome.  I wanted to do something different but couldn’t find the right way to convince others to follow that pathway.

I’ve written before about my obsession with assumptions.  Assuming that the same solution will work in a different situation—or that a solution that previously failed will not work now—can get you in trouble fast.  Most people are not sufficient students of history to know what’s different this time around.  It gets you in trouble in relationships, in business, and most certainly in global politics.  No matter how confident you are that you’ve “been there, done that,” know that you must take a moment to ask “what’s different now?”  It may bring you clarity or it may take you in a totally different direction.  I can’t tell you what will happen in Israel or what the “right” path forward is.  All I can see is that it’s different this time and we can’t jump to conclusions.  Similarly, while I know I have certainly been through my share of trying times, I need to take a breath and move through these times intentionally.

So, finding myself in uncharted waters again, I’m asking myself, “What is different this time?”  I’m not so much embracing the chaos as challenging myself to not give into it.  I’m starting by going to back to what I control and what I don’t.  I’m letting myself feel but trying hard not to just react.  I’m taking more deep breaths.  I’m not allowing myself to let the days slip by while I wait for things to get better.  And I’m writing again.  We’ll see what comes next.

“T” is for Time

Let me begin by thanking the astonishing number of you who took the time to reach out to me to wish our cat, Beau, well.  In my last essay on Surrender I shared that Beau had taken ill and we were on an unknown pathway.  It was a lesson in surrendering control, taking things day by day, and not getting ahead of what we knew.  Unfortunately, in the short time between publishing that essay and starting to write this one, Beau’s health declined rapidly.  After three visits to the Emergency Vet to drain fluid building in his chest cavity and long discussions with both our vet and the surgeon about what might lie ahead for him, we made the hard yet compassionate decision to let him go.  Last Wednesday morning, we dripped tears onto our little boy’s head as we soothed him across the rainbow bridge.  His breathing slowed as his little body relaxed and he finally rested.  We are simply heartbroken.  His is a gentle soul, gone way too soon.  We just didn’t have enough Time with him, although we got an awful lot of love out of those five short years he was ours.

It’s no secret to anyone that time is the great leveler.  No matter how much money or power or influence you have, you cannot reverse time or make it stand still.  Sure, there are things you can do to improve the quality of the time you have or to get more out of time, but you can’t control it.  Ignoring the detailed physics of Einstein’s space/time continuum for the moment, time marches linearly forward for us.  What we do with the time we have is mostly up to us.

I think back to the late 90’s when I was living in Mexico on an expat assignment.  I lived in an area about two hours north of Mexico City that is a beautiful place.  It’s far enough south to never get too cold; it’s high enough in elevation to never get too hot; and, it’s in a semi-arid climate so it never got too humid.  I was living in eternal springtime.  I would take walks, saying to myself, “Appreciate this EVERY DAY.  You are living in paradise and it won’t last forever.”  I didn’t, of course, appreciate it every day.  There was work and the stressors of living in a foreign country and I would find myself missing “home” regularly.  But there were also many, many days of joy when I did indeed remember my mantra to appreciate each day there.  I knew time was limited.  I wanted to eke out as much happiness as I could.

I am not breaking any new philosophical ground by writing on this topic.  We all know that time is a limited commodity and that we should take the time to stop and smell the roses.  And we all get lost in day-to-day minutia that keeps us from focusing on the joy.  I’m writing about this right now simply because I feel that lesson very acutely.  I am navigating all the “firsts” without Beau.  The first morning without feeding him breakfast.  The first time going to put in eye drops and not having him follow me to get Greenies, which are on the shelf below my drops.  The first time sitting in the lounger in the bedroom where he always would jump up and snuggle me.  While I tried to appreciate each interaction, there were certainly times when I’d push him off of my lap because I wanted to get up or he was chewing my headphone cord while I was on a Zoom call with my college friends.  I don’t think I ever missed appreciating his cuteness, which is why Facebook will remind me of him several times a month for the rest of my own life.  (How many pictures can I post of one cat?  A lot.)  I just figured I’d have him for at least 10 more years than I did.

When I was a kid, time seemed to go so slowly.  There was no problem living in the present.  Summers lasted forever.  At the beginning of each school year, it seemed like an eternity had passed, in good part because everyone seemed to change so much over those short summer months.  Four years of high school and four years of college seemed to pass slowly (compared to how time passes now), probably because we packed so much living into those years.  I was growing by leaps and bounds, each year bringing such different challenges.  Now, of course, four years passes in the blink of an eye.  Trish and I have been married (mentally calculating) over six years.  I feel like we just met last year!  And yet, reminders of the passage of time are all around.

We spent the weekend at a family wedding and I was acutely aware of several aspects of passing time.  First, I must say it was a very…regular…wedding.  I use “regular” purposefully, instead of “normal”.  It was in a beautiful setting; there were around 200 people representing four generations; there were two beaming sets of parents; there were neighbors and relatives and friends; there was a charming and funny rabbi (as all good rabbis are) under a chupah draped with tallitot from both families.  The only thing a little “not regular” was that there were two brides.  Everything else, and I mean EVERYTHING, was just as you’d expect from a joyous family wedding.  I marveled at the passing of time and was so happy that these women could experience something I never could have even imagined when I was their age.  I have to admit that, in some ways, I was jealous.  While there are still certainly barriers and struggles to being gay in this world, they came of age at a time when they could date and learn how to be in a healthy relationship in a reasonably supportive atmosphere and this gives me hope that their union will truly last.

I was also acutely aware of how the passage of time changed how my generation approached these family lifecycle events.  When our generation was “the kids,” we ran around and danced and played.  At the Sunday morning brunch, the brides were telling us about the after-party and the after-after-party.  We were in bed by 11:00 and proud of ourselves for staying up that late!  Now, we’re the “parents”.  The music WE liked was played early.  Later on, when the band was playing music we didn’t know, we sat at the tables and talked—just like our parents did.  That “cousin” bond is still strong; it’s just different now.

So, as I settle back into my usual schedule, I am reminding myself to be present.  I feel like I lost so much precious time in my adult life waiting for something to happen—to get through college or grad school or through a work assignment that was not very fulfilling.  I kept hoping I’d be happier when I reached some goal or when something difficult (sometimes a relationship!) would draw to a close.  It took meeting Trish for me to realize that this is it:  each day mattered.  I’ll be sad about Beau for a while, I know, but Bridget is still here and needs lots of love.  She is a bit out of sorts, but is adjusting.  I think her biggest issue is that she now only gets to eat one cat’s worth of food since her brother is no longer leaving leftovers for her.  Loss is a part of life and I know there is more loss to come.  But there is also more joy, like this weekend’s wedding.  Stay present, Sherri.  There is still time.

“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.)

“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.

“P” is for Pendulum

Back in the early days of the pandemic, I wrote an essay on Balance.  In it, I used the visual of a pendulum instead of a two-pan scale.  Balance, I encouraged you to think, is a dynamic process (like the swinging of a pendulum) and not a static process (like perfectly balancing the weights on a two-pan scale).  The goal, I wrote, is not to achieve some nirvanic state of perfect balance, but to keep the amplitude of the swings to a minimum.

I’ve been noodling a lot on balance, again.  In that earlier essay, I was writing in the context of balancing precautions around exposure to the COVID virus with the need to keep our economy moving a bit and not isolate people too much.  This time, I’ve been thinking more about pendulum swinging.  Why do people seem to drive to extremes so easily?  And how can we dampen that swing to keep the pendulum oscillating more gently around the middle?

I think back to my time living in Mexico.  Since I lived about two hours from the Mexico City airport, guys from the plant where I worked were kind enough to drive me there when I needed to travel.  I lived in Central Mexico, which is clearly the most perfect place on earth.  High enough in elevation to never get too hot; southern enough to never get too cold.  Home were neither heated nor air conditioned.  But what that meant is that drives to the airport on cool winter mornings were an exercise in temperature extremes.  We’d be driving for a bit, freezing, when I’d ask the driver to turn on the heat.  He would turn it on full blast at the highest temperature setting.  After sweating for a while, I’d ask him to turn it down.  But he would turn it off.  There seemed to be nothing in between.  We’d alternatively freeze and sweat for the two-hour drive.  I’m sure, on average, the temperature in the car was comfortable.  But the swings of temperature were not.  The pendulum swung way too wildly when a nudge here and there would have worked much better.

I am a fan of the Art of the Nudge.  Maybe it’s my background as a synthetic organometallic chemist.  When you are trying to measure out exact milligrams of something, you learn to nudge.  Maybe it’s my evolving skills as a cook (not unrelated to my background as a chemist).  When you are cooking, it’s better to nudge the temperature, not cycle between full-on heat and off.  Nudging—small adjustments—work better when you are trying to approach an optimum.  These types of small adjustments also tend to work better to create lasting change.

There is a Japanese concept called “kaizen” that we would all do well to embrace.  This is the practice of making small changes.  Once a small change becomes engrained, you make another small change.  Little by little, you end up with a big change.  There are two advantages to approaching transformation with this method.  The first is that by absorbing small changes, you have a better chance of making them stick.  The second, of course, is that you avoid swinging the pendulum too far and too fast.  Dieting and exercise are two areas where we tend to be pendulum swingers.  When you approach a change in your diet (with the goal of losing weight) by eating restrictive fare, it is not uncommon to lose a bunch of weight and be miserable in the process.  Once the weight is off, too many of us swing the pendulum back to all the foods we love which packed on weight in the first place—and guess what happens?  Making small but permanent changes to how you eat is an example of kaizen.  A two-week juice cleanse is not.  Similarly, I’ve certainly experienced epiphanies around exercise.  I will place a significant expectation/burden on myself around how much I work out and how many days a week such that I either burn out or hurt myself.  Then I end up back on the couch again.  Small changes have a better chance at sticking.  And once you’ve engrained one small change, then you can decide if you want to take on another.

Managing those pendulum swings is easier when you are managing a change within yourself.  Sure, we all get impatient, or greedy, and push that pendulum too far.  We, alone, must deal with the backlash of the swinging pendulum which hopefully encourages moderation.  And many people go through their entire lives swinging from one extreme to another, so “easier” does not mean “easy”.  The real difficulty, though, comes when a change you might be pushing for—a movement of the pendulum to a different balance point—affects others.

Those who push for big changes usually come from one of two camps:  those highly unhappy with the status quo and those who just like to create chaos.  I have some compassion for the former.  I get highly irritated with the latter, so we’re just going to ignore them for the purposes of this essay.  Humans, generally, don’t like change.  We like life to be predictable, within boundaries, because it feels safer.  We like where the pendulum sits and we tolerate only minor swings around that balance point. If you are reasonably comfortable with the status quo, you will generally resist change.  If you are unhappy with the status quo, you will generally push for change and the amplitude of your push is proportional to your unhappiness.  If you are unhappy, you don’t see the current status of the pendulum as swinging gently through a balance point.  You see it as way off balance and want to give it a big push in the other direction.  (“Perspective” is another good “P” word.)  Living in a pluralistic society means that there will always be people who agitate for change and people who are happy with things just as they are.  I would argue that the benefits of living in a pluralistic society are worth it, but that’s a discussion for another time.  (Or maybe never, since my instinct is not to touch that one with a 10 foot pole!)

We have, however, absorbed a stunning amount of change if you view life over a longer time line.  As one example, I am stunned at the advances in LGBTQ+ rights and recognitions in my lifetime.  In fact, just look at how the term itself has evolved!  First, it was about “gay rights”; then “gay and lesbian rights”; then “LGBT”; now “LGBTQ+”—and in many instances even MORE letters that strive to include other marginalized elements of the community.  That does not mean there has not been regression or backlash (two steps forward, one step back).  Each time the term was expanded, each time the pendulum was nudged, there was pushback and it certainly continues today.  But the overall trend has been bravely forward and society is absorbing that change.  In fact, everything that agitates us today has probably been much worse at earlier times in human history.  As a big fan of the Outlander series of books, I have started watching the series on Starzz.  I can only watch it during the day, though, because the degree of violence that was typical of the 1700’s keeps me up at night.  Does that mean that we are done evolving?  No.  Does that mean that all these societal changes have been happily accepted by all?  Clearly not.  If you are the person agitating for change and pushing on that pendulum, remember that small changes are still good and you need to play the long game.  And if you are the person resisting change, try to understand why the status quo doesn’t work for the person pushing the pendulum.  It’s ok to push back a little to moderate the swing but not, generally, to stop it all together.  We all want balance, but it’s a dynamic process.  Just small swings, ok?