A book recommended I go outside my comfort zone by ( among other things ) facing the rear of the elevator when it’s full
I tried it today. Elevator full of ladies. I was startled to see al women . I faced them and said “I’ve gathered you here…”
They laughed and kidded with me. I told them I was doing an exercise to go outside my comfort zone. I thanked them for being gracious
A few weeks ago, my employer paid for the group of us to get personality analysis. We rolled our eyes and convened in a hotel convention room for a day of personality training. This particular method (Emergenetics) had the usual four types of personalities, and each person had their recipe of the four types.
And this one had something I hadn’t seen before: behaviors. As they put it, personality is how you think, but people see how you behave. They are not as related as one might expect. They ranked three kinds of behaviors:
Expressiveness- do you express how you feel?
Assertiveness – Do you fight for what you want?
Flexibility – are you willing to compromise?
At the end of the class, we lined ourselves against the wall according to our percentile of each. I was ranked 95th percentile expressive. So I hung out just below the 100 hanging on the wall.
I was alone. Most everybody else was bunched way over to the other end of the scale. I moved down a little for the next two, as we went through exercises.
Nothing in my life has ever made it so clear to me what an outlier I am. My co-worker friend cocked his head at my amazement and said “duh! You didn’t know?”
No. I had no idea.
Well. I am some kind of geyser of thoughts, feeling and words. This can make some other people uncomfortable. Hmm. I want to analyze and manage it better.
I would like to think of a sort of smokescreen. A sort of white noise setting for myself. Not that I don’t want to be myself, yet I would be willing to adjust somewhat for others.
This weekend, I was thinking of this as I heard a favorite podcaster talk about the death and life of Pete Seeger. Seeger spent his life collecting songs that were very singable.
I love those kinds of songs.
I went to go find some Seeger on YouTube. I found his performance of This Land is My Land for the 2009 presidential inauguration.
Look at him. He is singing a song that every American kid learns. His white hair and beard makes me think of every single kindly gray beard who has been kind to me–so many! –over my life.
He waves his arms “Sing! Everybody Sing! You can do it! I’ll give you the words.”
I was crying. I had to turn it off before I upset my daughter.
Look at all those people together! I felt the togetherness…and the sweet childlike chorus.
In between all the weekend work of mothering and maintenance, I thought this might be the sort of thing that I was looking for. A white noise. I would be delighted to burst into song around people at work.
Singing strikes people and disarms them in ways I recognize and do not understand.
I thought I would love to gift that calm and goodwill to other people around me. That sense of us. Would it be possible?
I started singing some of these kid songs, trying them on for size for use in a corporate environment.
Another thing about Pete Seeger is that he was an activist. He had some strong political opinions.
Politics is power, right?
Power.
Power is so nervous. So skittish. It’s hard enough to be confident and secure in one’s own personal field of life. Then add on this political power, and the chaos increases.
I imagined going to a performance review, and singing This land is my land as we prepared to get started.
Hm.
Business power might not like the reminder that we are the same. The suit there might consider it a threat. “THIS IS NOT YOURS! IT’S MINE!”
Not calming.
So I started singing a tune I really like
I’ve been working on the railroad All the livelong day
I’ve been working on the railroad Just to pass the time away
Can’t you hear the whistle blowing? Rise up early in the morn
I rise up early in the morning. Quite early. I wonder what a boss would read into that?
Dang. These are not white noise at all. Music is not to be trifled with. These kids’ songs are more than I realized.
I wish that songs would not make people nervous.
I wish that my expressiveness and assertiveness did not make people nervous.
These are simple and natural things, both of them. Simple and natural isn’t, in our man-made complicated world.
Sorry Boss, it’s me. There’s no helping it.
~
I woke in a quiet bedroom. I was on the trundle bed but my friend was not in her bed. Before I was fully awake I knew something was wrong. Every alarm bell in my heart was ringing.
I knew I was in trouble. How did I know? An empty room with no sound and I knew. What would it be this time?
I tried to tell myself that I was being ridiculous and I didn’t believe myself.
I had to go in the silent house from the basement to the fourth floor to find my friend. She had slept in that spare bedroom instead of her room.
“My dad is really mad. I think you are going to need to apologize.”
She had begged me to stay at her house while I was on missionary furlough. I hadn’t wanted to because I didn’t really like her pastor dad, but she was my friend and I felt sorry for how alone she was.
She continued, not looking me in the face, “He didn’t like how late you came in last night….and there is other stuff. He’ll make an appointment to talk to you in his office.”
How had I known? How had the air vibrated with warning before any discernible message had been given to me?
I will never forget that morning. It is a touchstone to me for intuition.
I am not so great at intuition. I talk myself out of hunches and impressions. I like data and analytical proof.
Some things…a lot of things…the best things?…do not match with analysis.
In the last couple years I have been working on happiness. If happiness is to be analyzed, and God knows I must analyze it because that’s what I do, all experiments must be subjective. I want to know about my happiness.
I am the scientist and the subject for my happiness experiments.
And to adequately measure my own happiness after I try a hypothesis I have to use intuition.
I hate intuition. It is subjective and not provable and not what I really want. I began by completely rejecting it as something to pay attention to. As a matter of fact, I doubted it’s existence. You can’t measure intuition!
Then I remembered that one morning on the trundle bed. I could not deny that experience. It happened, it happened to me, and I will never forget it.
So. If intuition exists, how do I grasp it?
I had to step onto the flying carpet. Intuition involves my subjective slippery self.
Having spent a lot of time re-wiring reflexes to the schema of what I was supposed to want and feel, intuition was not readily accessible.
“Doing what comes natural” and “Follow your bliss” were nonsensical statements for me. I appreciated the sentiment.
My natural bliss was in a corner behind a lot of heavy boxes. At least I think it is. That’s where I started looking.
A couple things I’ve discovered about intuition. It is:
That last part turns out to be the most important. My intuition is the divine spark of knowing and creation that God put inside of me. That’s why it is so ineffable, and also why it is so important.
I think I want the security of repeatable and provable analysis. What I know, though, is more important than what I can logic out. How frustrating! And how much faith is required to know without security.
I know.
I’m not done moving the heavy boxes out of the way to find my natural intuition. I’m not going to be done for a long time, maybe ever. And I know it’s worth it.
i suppose that if I were abel to use a keyboaard and had the right software, I might not need to carry around a full computer anuymore.
I wonder if I could write out a book on an ipad.
Whoa
Beauty
Self-reliance (Emerson’s essay)
Consciousness
Freedom
Discovery
Courage
Exploring
Spiritual/Religious
Introspection
Ambition
education/learning
Travel
Adventure
Technology/Systems
Music
Art
Reading
Maker (Like this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maker_culture)
Creation
Cooking/Food
Wandering
Family
Home
Cooking/Food
Friends
Ecology/Responsibility
Connection
Career
Partnership
Veronica played crazy eights. Old maid and go fish for the first time last night
Anesthesia has been around for a long time, thank god. It has made modern medicine possible. Surgery was not readily accomplished before the patient could be knocked, and REALLY knocked out. This podcast brought to my attention a new discovery regarding the old practice of anesthesia.
It seems that the drugs used to knock people out sends a wave through the brain. The very slow wave resets the brain, not to kill all conscious activity, but to slow it down to the time of the wave. The parts of the brain that are sending activity messages go dormant when the other parts wake up. It’s not that messages aren’t being sent, it’s that the messages aren’t being received.
Ever hear of the three-way handshake? This is an important concept to me. It is the concept that the Internet is pretty much based on. It goes like this:
One computer says to another “Hey, I want to talk to you.”
The other computer says, “I acknowledge that you want to talk to me, and I want to synchronize with you.”
The first computer responds with “I acknowledge your synchronization.”
And after that three-way handshake they are talking and you can watch that cat video.
The handshake does not always complete. There are a lot of reasons they can’t always get through that synchronization. Mostly, because one or the other side isn’t listening.
Like our brain on anesthesia.
Or like every argument ever.
In my life, I have often had something I wanted to say SO BAD that I couldn’t hear what anyone was saying to be. I have been to tightly wound that my message was the only one I could hear. The other party may have had something super important to tell me and I had no channel open to hear them.
For all intents and purposes, I would have been better off talking to a photograph of the person to whom I so desperately needed to speak. Most of the time, the person I was talking to didn’t understand the importance of what I was trying to say at all.
Then again, how would I know? I wasn’t listening to them as I had my torrent of words to say.
It seems awkward and overly complicated for computers to go through the whole three steps. Why not just start talking?
I have some friends who are like that. We can leap in wherever whenever and understand one another right away.
Those friends are rare and precious. Not everybody is like that. Which is why I need to slow down and keep my listening channels clean.
She had her birthday yesterday. THat was her birthday.
Today, it is my day to think about the last 5 years
These last five years were the hardest of my life.
I would like to thank all my friends who supported me, bless you.
It’s not just the one thing (motherhood) that made these last five years what they have been. but, life isn’t just one thing. Life is always one thing after another, and often not even separated.
It’s been indescribable.
thinking of this song
You have to keep a close eye on it, and I haven’t been.
If you don’t have your health, people say, you don’ t have anything. Even more I would say, you have to keep your sense of humor.
Shakespeare had the Fool in so many of his plays. They were comic relief sometimes. Comic relief is no joke. When I am all caught up in all the seriousness of goals and roles and responsibilities, comic relief is exactly what I need.
He didn’t make it up. Kings kept fools. The fools could speak where others dare not tread.
Roses are Red
Violets are Blue
What is ridiculous?
YOU
and with laughter could come wisdom. Yes, we are ridiculous. I don’t need to be mad about that perceived insult. Or that one.
What’s really important?
I have felt for a long time that we need to bring back the office of official Fool.
We need Fools in the White House and at Capitol Hill.
Fools in the corporate board rooms.
Official Fools. Professional Fools.
Life is awfully serious. And it doesn’ t have to be.
Try to juggle sometime, and you’ll know that it is inevitable that balls will be dropped.
Imagine the thinning gray scalps around an important table. After an endless meeting of grim realities, the hat is passed. All partners take a slip of paper, and one has an x.
The caterer enters, presents the tray. He drapes a sheet over the shoulders of the designated x.
POW!
Pie in the face.
That would change the tone of the meeting.
This is the last day that Veronica is four.
She’s grown up so much.
When I have blogged about her, I mostly talk about what I am feeling and what I think of what she’s up to.
There are dear things though, that it would be good to remember. I can see, as she is on the cusp of literacy and the huge influx of communication that will mean, she is about to explode in new activities.
The days will fill and burst with new memories.
Everyone says “They grow up so fast.”
No, she has not. These last 5 years have not gone fast. I have felt every day. Each ran through my hands not like sand, but like sticky molasses.
Is it wrong? It is what it is.
And I think that’s about to stop.
I may not recall how, for the longest time she called Pizza “Pizzum”
Or how, when she was very very little, instead of reaching for something herself, she would reach for my hand and guide it to the thing she wanted so I would get it for her.
Will I remember how clingy she was for the first few months at church, and made me sit up in the front during “time with the Children” while kids younger than her had no problem?
Will I remember how she loves her fuzzy rocking horse, that she sat on before her 2nd christmas in the store, and persuaded me to purchase it then and there?
I don’t do that. I always delay purchases.
Will I rembmer how she loves that horse past the time it fit, and how she drags it around behind her? How she now calls it Bossie?
And then..the kitties. They are gone. Will she remember the kitties?
Will I remember how she likes to make soup? That I have to give her a bowl she can fill with water, and ingredients. Flour is popular, and never-used spices and salt. She loves salt.
Will we remember how long she took to sleep alone? It was hell while it was happening.
Will we remember her younger days of cavorting in her crib?
I dont want to forget her call of “Who wants to wash your feet for sale?”
We must come in and present our feet to her in the bath tub as she poured water and washed them.