I know I have made plans to cry from time to time.

When I knew the audience I was working with, and I had a goal in mind, I would plan to let the tears go.

To be fair, I have definitely cried when I didn’t’ want to, and had to excuse myself to return to the topic– when I have lost my composure and most certainly was not behaving with intention.

Emotions are not under my control. Unless they are. And then I can use them. Like, when I knew it would help to cry. And I could work up the tears to get what I needed out of the situation.

But one thing I haven’t learned how to do is yell with intention. If I yell, it’s a loss of control. I probably feel like I’m in control, but those might be the same times when I think I’m not yelling.

My daughter has a fine-tuned sense of when I am yelling. And it is not always associated with an increase in volume.

But really, when I get yelled at by someone else

a friend

my husband

a boss

Volume isn’t the biggest factor.

It’s the emotional content.

Crying is emotional too. No doubt. As I think about it, however, crying in front of someone is only about myself. It’s admitting that I feel something. It’s an exposure of something inward. If I cry, it’s being vulnerable and exhibiting something about me.

The emotional content of yelling is a push. It is expressing a judgment of someone else. Judgments are sharp things.

I suppose done properly, voicing a judgment that lifts up rather than puts down is a force for good.

Come on! Don’t give up, you can do it!

If you push just a little harder you will achieve it

That might be called cheering rather than yelling.

But judgements most often don’t work that way. And yelling is for the most part a hurtful expression. It most often happens inside my own head too.

I yell at myself so often it doesn’t even require words anymore. And it’s not very helpful.

We were discussing this at my diet support group. We encourage one another to persist, and to keep going in our path to good healthy choices.

The leader said, “I’ve been doing this for more than ten years. I’ve never heard anyone say they hated themself to success.”

Hmm. That leads me back to the question that started this essay. When would it make sense to yell with intention?

or to restate

When would it be useful to cut someone with a judgmental statement?

When I say it like that, the answer is unequivocally never.

But to cheer someone on, to state things baldly and with positivity, I would like to do a lot more of that on purpose.

If it’s true for everybody, it must be true for you.

Or

The universal is personal.

Imagine if the world started spinning more slowly. What would that mean?

The end of the world, right? But slowly. And gradually.

And things that happen slowly and gradually are the new normal.

I just finished reading The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker. It’s science fiction, which you all know I have issues with. And yes, it’s dystopian. The earth inexplicably has begun to spin slower. Days and night are longer, respectively. Other laws of physics we are used to relying on begin to break down.

That would be reason enough for a story. But this story is told from the perspective of a 6th grade girl. In a central California suburb.

It is distinctly possible that everything in the world of a girl that age is dystopian. Her best friend deserts her at the same time and her mom becomes unraveled. There are plenty of girls of that particular age who experience this while the world continues spinning as it always has.

I think that the author used the perspective of a girl as a crutch, not to have to explain why the earth changed spinning speeds. It’s a deus ex machina move, and to leave it unaccounted for is a hole in the story.

But once I forgave Walker for not giving me the sci-fi juice I felt I deserved, I could see the story for what it really was: the perspective of a very privileged and safe little girl suddenly in a world that is not longer safe for anyone.

What is safety? Her doting parents and solid best friendship turn out to be more tenuous than she realized. And when she could no longer assume what she had always relied upon, the lack of her best friend at her school lunch table was far more meaningful to her than the earth’s rotation.

For a 12 year old, that lunch table is vastly more important.

In the same way, our every day lives, experiences and relationship matter a lot more than the big issues.

It matters that someone wishes me well as I start my day. It matters what smiles I meet.

There’s not much I can do about the earth’s rotation. There’s not a lot I can do about a lot of things.

But I can be a force of love and kindness in the world. It makes a difference.

I made up a new word. English let’s you do that .

I’ve been working on the toughest project of my life, and it’s been scooping me out. At the same time I’ve been getting excellent teamwork.

It’s not just the teamwork. Kindergartners know that word.

The people I have been working with have practiced

TEAMSMANSHIP

That’s my word. And to underline this idea, I have coincidentally been reading Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana. My daughter’s been reading a children’s version for school. She was telling me about it, excited to learn about sailors’ life.

At last! I could read a book with her. I picked it up this week and have been swimming in the metaphors and vocabulary of the middle 1800s.

Veronica is telling me she wants to try salt beef. Me too!

Dana’s book is famous not just because it’s a good book–which it is–but also because it formed a basis for a reorganization of the rights of sailors.

He talks about the hard work of the sailors from an American perspective. Living all together, eating together and working together is a whole lot of togetherness.

And it is understood that a sailor should always have work to do. There was no doubt that every single one of the crew on the ship had opinions of one another’s skills in any of their tasks. They had very repetitive tasks. And when one of them took their work easy, it made another’s work harder.

Dana talks about how the captain and the mates would keep the crews in line, bawling the out to keep it all moving and on task.

In a well-run ship, everyone knew their work and did it. But the mates kept the standards.

I don’t work on a ship. Here in the 21st century, we have a different sort of work model. Yet the concept of each person knowing their work and doing it remains.

That’s the teamsmanship I was experiencing. All the people involved were in this were leaning in. I didn’t have to chase anyone down. My team was fully engaged in completing their task to the best of their ability, and communicating with me, the captain of this project.

In these times, people are expected to bring knowledge and dedication to their work. If people don’t bring those things, teamwork can still happen. But when they do bring their best experience and problem solving skills to the task, it’s beautiful.

When we catch each other’s mistakes, and give suggestions about how we can avoid them–That’s teamsmanship. That’s the ideal we are all looking for.

This is the year she gets a second digit.

For her 10-year-old birthday party, Veronica said she wanted to have people to our house and the party should be fancy.

Fancy? What does that mean?

Well, everyone should wear a fancy costume, whatever they wanted. And there should be fancy food.

“Do you want caviar?”

Once I explained what it was, “Definitely not. But I love shrimp! We should have that.”

“I can make that for you, but your friends might like something else. I could make a red carpet for you.”

“That would be awesome!”

Fancy clothes. Fancy food.

But that week, I didn’t have any time to do all the preparation I’d meant to do. My house was a mess, and I’d been up since four AM dealing with a different crisis.

I’d bought some red plastic to be a carpet. So as I shoveled out the piles of mess from my house, made the shopping list of essentials and tried to figure out how to keep the red plastic flat so it could be walked on, I considered what fancy was supposed to be.

Red carpet is what celebrities and movie stars walk on. They dress up and strike a pose.

Fancy food and drink is basic to any party or celebration. But all the birthday parties before had paper plates with bright pictures on them. Some toy or cartoon character wishing the birthday girl a happy birthday.

In that moment, I felt the opposite of fancy. Sleep deprived, and pretty sure I’d failed my daughter in her request. I’d done so little!

I sponged off the glass table outside where the food would be, and put the toys in their places. I had barely enough time to do that much.

Chris did the grocery run for the cake and the children’s champagne- Martinelli’s Cider. I didn’t have time to get the paper plates and napkins that kid birthday parties are supposed to have.

But this was fancy, right? We’d have to use our ordinary breakable dishes.

And we could bring down the stemware. I’d have to trust these kids, but I think we could deal with a broken glass if necessary.

As the kids trickled in–and there weren’t too many of them–they enjoyed the red carpet. Their interpretation of fancy clothes was charming, and kid elegant. Once they’d all arrived and investigated everything, they clamored for the champagne.

We popped the Martinelli’s, and it dramatically bubbled over the side.

I gave each of them a stemware glass and filled it. I explained that this is fancy, and that these were glasses you had to sit with. No running with the fancy glasses.

They were sobered, and before they took their sips, I invited them to make toasts. They each made a toast, the youngest saying “I wish Veronica a happy year, this first year of having two digits. Amen”

And they clinked their glasses, holding the wobbly glasses in their laps for a moment.

It was when they were eating the lunch, Veronica with her shrimp and the rest with their requested sandwiches, I saw this for what it was.

These friends had been with Veronica since kindergarten. There is no insecurity amongst them. Love, trust and friendship.

A group of friends around a table enjoying the finest things in life- that is the archetype of sophistication at any age.

“The lesson we will focus on today is receiving.”

I looked around at the other people in the class, knowing that I was the newbie and I was sure they would all be familiar and experienced.

I’d never been to an acting class, even though this was Los Angeles, Mecca of all acting.

I am a writer. I work with words.

But I write about characters, and acting is about characters. Everyone is a character, so I wanted to explore how people interacted.

This was an improv class. And I was impressed with the teacher

“Every piece of information is a gift. Improv is about listening and giving back.”

Knowledge is power. And if I know something you don’t, it can be really powerful to share that knowledge. Sharing our knowledge can change the world.

Just look at Wikipedia.

So the few of us learned about giving information to each other to start interacting.

Which was really strange and weird, because we were acting. We were pretending.

In this pretend world, giving each other very basic information was a huge gift. In the world of improv, where you are, who you were and what you were doing was enough to hang a whole universe on.

Wait.

I don’t think that’s only improv.

Being aware of the surface of what is happening and who I am is extremely powerful.

And I say that as one with a deep appreciation for what is below the surface.

Who am I today and what am I doing in the world? I can choose that every single moment, but only if I am aware of it.

I want to give myself that gift.

My dog has fleas. Well, not anymore.

To be precise, *I* have fleas. Not my dog, not my family, no.

All me. I am the most delicious person any insect has ever met, and no insect can resist me.

So when my dog got fleas, and gave them to the cat, and I had bites on my ankles, the cat and the dog got flea treatment and they are fine.

But the fleas keep biting me.

I with I could wear a flea collar. This is embarrassing. I have a whole ring around my ankle of swollen itchy bites.

So I tried some things. I vacuumed, washed all bedding. It seemed to work for a day.

Then I found some herbal flea treatment, and sprayed the couch and the cat with it.

That didn’t seem to work at all.

Ok, it was time for some serious flea poison. Me and the internet spent some time together. I needed what the pros used.

So I found it. I had to order it through the mail. I was SO HAPPY when it arrived. I sprayed it all over the couch, and washed all the bedding (AGAIN).

I went to bed that night thinking, “Last night was my last itchy flea bite. Never again.”

I’ve had “never again” times before.

I’ve told myself

I’m never going to be treated that way again.
I’m never going to make this or that mistake again.

I’ve heard other people say
I’m never going to drink that much again.
I will never smoke another cigarette

Never again is hard to enforce.

In concept, if the “never again” is in my control then it should be easy, right? I’ll just never do it again.

But my weakness is far more reliable than my determination. The best I can hope for is that I will never give up trying for the thing I aspire to.

Then again if the “never again” thing is in the hands of someone else, I have no control over what someone else does. I can’t control how someone else treats me. The only possibility of a never-again that involves someone else is the nuclear option:

Total quarantine. Never be in the presence of that person again.

That’s appropriate in a small number of cases. For the rest of the time, I have to compromise with my never-again vow. I would have to commit to ‘never again will I let that go without comment’ or ‘never again will I react as I have in that circumstance.’

The ‘never again’ feels very powerful when I first say it.

But in my case, but it happened again. I woke again with VERY itchy bites.

Life is not like the movies. There are no jump cuts.

I had to go back, get educated and try again, with a more comprehensive and realistic plan.

I had to get real about what this was really going to take. Never again always means a couple more times.

I’ll get there. But there will be more scratching along the way.

Looking back, I realize that my mom was sharing something with me that was very foreign to her. This is not the way my mom thinks.

But, in the course of events during home school, my mom shared a planning tool with my brother and me.

“Think about what you would like your life to be like in 20 years…”

I was 14. Thirty-four years old was well past the edge of the known universe.

What could I say I wanted in that time?

I knew I wanted a family and I wanted certain accomplishments. And I wanted to be beautiful. Beauty seemed very important at 14.

Then Mom broke it down further. What would I have to accomplish in the next ten years to get to that outcome?

And then in 5 years?

two and a half years?

What would I need to do THIS YEAR to further the goals of what I wanted my life to be like when I was 34?

Which broke down into the next 6 months, then 3 months and this month, this week and today.

I LOVED this exercise. I took it extremely seriously. I really really wanted those dreams to come true. And breaking it down into things I could do TODAY made me very happy. It felt like those far away dreams were within reach.

My mom, who introduced me to this framework, does not think this way.

It turns out, from my now-lengthy life experience, very few people really find that sort of framework comfortable.

But from the age of 14 on, I have filled pages and pages of notebooks with year plans.

I will write out the 12 months, or if I am in a hurry, 3 months, and plot out what needs to happen to achieve some scheme or other.

It’s not that I always achieve it, or even the times when I do achieve it, I achieve it on the plotted schedule.

But just like when I was 14, it makes me feel like I can almost touch that desired goal. That I will make it.

Some people can daydream into it. For me, I need to feel like there are steps. And even if I get lost or stumble along the way, those steps guide me.

Like little glowing reflectors in the dark. I will find my way.

My way.

It’s a clean calendar, ready to be filled in with new adventures and new accomplishments. It’s only natural to want to fill it with things that are better than before.

A year full of new high water marks. Of personal bests.

It’s a well-known fact that in January the gym gets very crowded. All the people who set their sights on getting in shape for the New Year. But partway through February, everything dies down.

People stop going. They stop choosing that goal.

I’m not sure when it became popular, but it certainly wasn’t a thing when I was a kid. I hear it everywhere now though. “He’s making bad choices.”

My daughter got it in kindergarten. “You need to think about making a different choice.”

It’s a softened way of saying: “Do the right thing. Don’t do the wrong thing.”

Everything we have in life is the result of our choices.

Of course, when I was a kid, it didn’t feel like I had a lot of choices. I was given a very few options.

By the time I became an adult and had the opportunity to set up my own bouquet of choices, I learned very quickly a few principles of choices. At the time, I called it freedom.

In any circumstance, what choice, what course of action would give me the most possibilities?

Time and money were huge freedom maximizers. So in almost every choice I had, I would choose to keep my money rather than spend it. I had some VERY inexpensive apartments.

And time. If I let time run out it could lead to a situation where I HAD to choose something or lose something even bigger. And I never wanted to be out of options.

That made me very very very aware of the clock. It was the gatekeeper for choices.

I always wanted time and me to be on the same side.

Which means I have to stay ahead of the clock, because time doesn’t wait for me.

But I was hungry for all the choices I could get.

I’m not as hungry as I used to be. Now I have to use habits to keep up my pace.

But habits can degrade and they can even go bad on you.

Then it comes back to choices. New choices, or choosing old things anew.

Then the choices, if repeated become the new habit.

If the habits stick, then life changes.

With Christmas comes a lot of traditions. One very traditional newspaper (The Wall Street Journal) has a traditional editorial they run on Christmas. A Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Vermont C. Royster wrote it in 1949, and it is a good one.

It’s easy to insist on traditions at this holiday time. It is meant to tie us to our past, remind us of who and where we came from, and so the people who we came from influence us.

The songs we sing and the pies we make–Ham or turkey? These questions are already answered. We could make a different choice, but it is not breaking new ground.

We came from traditions, but then again, we have to take those traditions forward in a way that makes sense with the present.

We cannot completely clone the holiday experience we were given. If we are to hand it on to our children, it takes new people to move into the future. To procreate requires another person, and then those people thus created flavor the holiday experience too.

But that’s not even addressing the dead moose in the room:

Maybe we don’t want to recreate our traditions. Maybe they were not at all what we’d like and we want to go in an opposite direction. Not all traditions should be perpetuated.

Vermont C. Royster, the journalist who wrote the Christmas (and thanksgiving!) essay for the Wall Street Journal decades ago, was bequeathed a family tradition. His full name is Vermont Connecticut Royster. In his family, male children were traditionally given the name of two states to live with.

His uncles were named Arkansas Delaware, Wisconsin Illinois, Oregon Minnesota, and Iowa Michigan Royster. Really.

He himself had daughters, and named them Frances and Eleanor. He left that tradition behind.

It’s okay to do new things. To make a different choice.

Bringing in close friends has it’s own name now–chosen family. People who have been close and supportive who have become as close or closer than family–that is chosen family.

Despite the weight of tradition, I still get to choose. I can choose which traditions to keep and which to drop. I even get to choose the people I celebrate those traditions with. Peace and Joy are the point.

The Hallmark channel is at its apex right now:

CHRISTMAS

They have their niche, and this is it. I just read that they have increased their Hallmark Christmas movie output this year. Last year they released

THIRTY-SEVEN CHRISTMAS MOVIES

In 2018, they have released thirty-eight. Because people are watching.

I’ll cop to it. I watch the Hallmark Christmas movies. At the end of an exhausting day, I find it relaxing to watch a woman and her friends walk around in the daylight drenched snowscapes.

…None of these women commute to their ephemeral ‘job.’

For these modern dramas, there is a spirit that is the biggest character. Just like my Lit professor in college told me about Shakespeare’s plays, the character of England flavored all his plays. The Spirit of Christmas is the BIGGEST character in the Hallmark movies.

But while many of the characters in the movies undergo a transformation–often realizing that they should be grateful for their family/blessings/recently discovered monarchist family line–the spirit of Christmas will NOT change.

The goal is for Christmas to BE. It will BE the best Christmas ever. It will BE the Christmas that the children/husband/grandparent SHOULD have. Christmas is the perfect almost attainable state of being that we are all aspiring towards:

A tableau to place ourselves and our loved ones in.

Come in closer! Lean in! Smile! No, that’s not right, SMILE!!!

A science fiction TV series quite a while back made a big impression on me. I’ll admit it, I loved Babylon 5. I know sci-fi isn’t for everyone. But neither are hallmark movies.

In Bab5, the space station was grappling with two alien cultures that seemed the classic Good-Bad polarity. The one asked the characters: “Who are you?” and the other asked, “What do you want?”

When it was airing, I asked myself those questions in the mirror every day.

Spoiler alert: the “who are you?” aliens were creatures who demanded a sameness. They did not tolerate change, and therefore repressed growth.

The “what do you want?” aliens were willing to experiment and destroy sometimes.

I watched the show, and asked myself the questions; I wondered how perfect I was willing to be.

As it happened, I was not willing to be that kind of perfect anymore. I was ready to break out of the perfect image and grow into something new.

But we all know the lure. Hallmark knows the lure of one tiny day of choreographed perfection.

Just once

Just once to get it right

We can destroy it all the day after. Shucks, it will destroy itself anyway. But the one day will be for the scrapbook, when we can look back and tell ourselves who we are.