Tag: better

deserving

To feel like you deserve something can be a bit… funny. For me, anyway. For you; maybe it’s easy, but as someone who can’t help himself when it comes to the etymology and history, and who tries in ernest to be grateful for all things, and who fully acknowledges that all success is a gift from God (or Krishna, as it was explained to me, but that’s another tangent), it feels funny to look around my house that I will eventually own outright from the bank, chock full of wonderful musical instruments, vintage automobile parts, and among other things, the beautiful people I get to live out my days with and think “I deserve more.”

As I write this; we, as a family, are discussing an upcoming vacation. It won’t be a lengthy one but it will cost some money that we’ve saved for this precise application. After months of scrupulous saving, it’s suddenly time to ‘flip the switch’ and become decidedly un-precious about the fruits of our labour.

We are reserving hotel rooms, and buying plane tickets, and have already purchased concert tickets – the impetus of our journey. It’s taken a bit of time to change gears from the saving mentality to the spending mentality, and the word that brings us all into this place of feeling abundant is ‘deserving.’ As in “We deserve this.”

‘Deserving’ shares a root word with a superfluous dish that often follows dinner. An unnecessary indulgence, but an indulgence nonetheless. According to Krishna (and most other deities, I’m sure), we ‘deserve’ precisely fuck-all, and it is through the grace of God that we are permitted these indulgences. So it is not because we are ‘deserving’ of this vacation hat we are allowing ourselves to go, but by grace and grace alone.

It would do me – and probably you – well to remember these things in all that we do.

So I’ll try to seek joy in all things, because joy is like beauty in that it fades with time, especially if you are not choosing to find it where you are looking. We tip the people who are tasked with serving us in the hotels and restaurants we patronize, not only on this trip but in all our travels… this is how we tell people they are doing great work. But are we truly thankful for their efforts? Or do we feel we deserve them? As if we are ‘owed’ somehow…

As someone who is fairly tight-lipped in social settings, I’ll do my best to reach out and let people know they are appreciated.

It will mean more when my heart is in it.

distraction

I’m no theologian, and I’m certainly in no position to speak on matters of politics or social media. I have no formal education outside of highschool, and I can only speak from experience… but I do a lot of people watching, and I observe and analyze my own actions as frequently as I can, and I have undoubtedly seen some bizarre shit.

As I type this, I’m reminded of when I was in Calgary last week… I pulled into a very busy parking lot to meet someone at a restaurant, and about 50 feet in front of me I noticed 2 young girls, aged between 4 and 6, that had climbed into the trunk of a car and were attempting to close the trunk lid on themselves. While this was happening, the man I assume was their father was playing badminton with himself, in the parking lot. At the moment I was watching him, he lobbed his bright pink shuttlecock into a tree, and – again, the parking lot was full – started trying to knock the shuttlecock out of the tree by throwing his racket at it. By now, the children were securely trapped in the trunk, and I got out of my car and walked into the restaurant.

That story has no real bearing on anything, other than to state that I was early for my meeting, and that I obviously wasn’t staring at my phone, as this was far more entertaining.

I’ll often challenge myself not to look at my phone. Sometimes I lose, but that depends on the environment. In a recent pause for reflection in a dentist office waiting room, I listened to 2 clerks discuss the logistics of meeting a new online love interest one of them has, mentioning different work schedules as a challenge, among other things like dog stewardship and other hobbies as challenges. I’m not sure the experience enriched my life, but I was present and I think that’s something to be celebrated.

“Mindfulness” is a term we get to throw around a lot these days, but I’m reminiscent of a time when we didn’t have to put any emphasis on mindfulness, because we didn’t have a 24-hour casino, social hall, and strip-club in our pockets while we waited for someone to meet us.

We just waited.

And really, there’s nothing more mindful than sitting alone at a table with nothing but a cup of black coffee and your own thoughts to keep you company. We were mindful all the time… now we have the luxury of both tuning out and hitting the dopamine feeder-bar at any moment, to the point that some people do so while their waiting for a traffic light to turn green.

What’s more, is that although I am a slave to the social media as much as anyone else, I’ve started to (somewhat naturally) get my social media time dealt with in the morning before anyone wakes up. Sure, I get caught staring at my phone on occasion, but really nothing in my feed has changed from the early morning binge-session, so it’s pretty short-lived.

I’ve discovered that, although I am a staunch introvert, that I’d much rather connect with a human being or two in-person. I have no problem leaving my phone in my jacket pocket at this stage of life, and I’m thankful that my watch lets me know of certain correspondence because I really have no idea where my phone is half the time these days.

I don’t know if there’s anything to take from this… other than some affirmation that my droning on about being more present and in the moment over the past couple years seems to actually be taking root.

establishment

“Over 100 years ago, someone astutely said “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” That quote has been attributed to a great number of people throughout modern history and although some of them likely said it, they likely heard it elsewhere first.”

Over 100 years ago, someone astutely said “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” That quote has been attributed to a great number of people throughout modern history and although some of them likely said it, they likely heard it elsewhere first. It’s also been said that “Opportunity is often delivered in a fog of uncertainty” and while nobody seems to know where that came from either, both are true more often than not.

These days, as members of my inner circle try to build back trust through willpower and integrity, it’s not lost on me that if it’s trust they’re after, then it’s trust that must be issued.

When I was young & stupid, I attempted to hide a report card or two in an effort to delay the wrath of my parents. The result was poor, and I was ultimately told that I could no longer be trusted to do something as menial as take the trash out, let alone babysit a sibling or go to a movie – because who’s to say whether or not I was actually doing those things? I had broken a parent’s trust and when I inquired as to how I might repair the damage, I was told: “that’s up to you.”

I resented it then and I think it’s utter bullshit now.

I now find myself on the other side of that conversation with someone, I am compelled to furnish them with the opportunity to do better. We’ll start small, or course, but I’m past the point of feeling the need to punish this person and well into the territory of “loosening the leash” as it were. Without the opportunity to prove trust, how can more trust be gained?

As far as I can see, it can’t.

I fully understand that if I were to break the trust of my employer, I would be dismissed and replaced. That’s the real world, hard lessons that adults have to learn sometimes – except I am not this person’s employer. I want to see this person succeed and be a gracious human, and if I cannot be one, I can not expect anyone else to be one either.

Once that’s acknowledged, then a standard must be set, and it must be set by me, and I must be the example. Without the opportunity for redemption, there’s no purpose in carrying on… that’s why we check in on our people…

… even the ones who hurt us.

the gears

I’m at a point where someone who had my trust lost it, and wants it back. It’s a truly strange time of life, because typically when these things happen there are a lot of feelings involved, and a reluctance to want to put yourself in the line of fire a second time – but at this time in my life, and in my unique relationship with this person, I want to enthusiastically give that trust back.

There are a few reasons that this is different, but the primary reason I want to give the trust back is: service.

I’m in a position of leadership, and contrary to what most people think when they think of leadership, leading is a service and I want this person to know that holding back trust serves no one. I want to give them that and I want them to give it in the future, because when someone wrongs you or breaks your trust and is truly remorseful over it, that remorse is a greater teacher than I can ever be. There’s no need to “give ’em the gears” when they’ve given themselves the gears, it is not help for them, and it certainly does me no good to put someone through the rigors of gaining my satisfaction in their pain.

Forgiveness and sorrow are not what I thought they were. When I am sorry, it is because I have sorrow – and when I forgive, it’s not because I am satisfied with the level of atonement someone else has reached – I forgive so that the person asking forgiveness can let themselves off the hook for what they’ve done. I am telling them they can stop punishing themselves.

Now, I did not conclude this overnight.

These things do take time, and I’ll never say they don’t – but I will say that they shouldn’t take longer than necessary. We can too easily use guilt as leverage for control over one another, which becomes nefarious overtime. The last thing I want to be in anyone’s life is the villain, so I strive to be a positive entity – One who serves the situation and the person.

So when they are truly ready, I must also be ready.

happy where you are

It’s pretty easy to be happy when everything is fine… a little harder when it’s not. I had something knock my positivity a little off-course a couple months back and it’s been difficult to reclaim my bearings a bit, but I’ve gained clarity on things in a way I thought I understood before; and maybe I was right, but is much more obvious to me now.

I’ve heard lot about being happy where you are, which is ultimately the foundations of the phrase ‘money can’t buy happiness‘ but I’ve always had difficulty squaring that with my motivation to move forward and do more, being the goal oriented person that I am. Only recently have I realized that in the context of my everyday losses & victories that I ultimately couldn’t possibly be any happier than I am right now. My struggles are my own, but the truth is that I wouldn’t trade them for anyone else’s. I am self aware and moving forward, and over all I am happy – in part because I am happy moving forward.

I suppose I got it into my head somehow that the term ‘being happy where you are‘ gets broken into 2 halves, (a) ‘being happy‘ and (b) ‘where you are.’

‘Being happy‘ is not a foreign concept, but ‘where you are‘ somehow presents as some stationary place, as in ‘if my life never changed, would I be good with that?’ but that’s really not what it is. It’s more momentary and granular than that. As I type this, I’m sitting at my laptop and I am happy doing so. After this I’ll be doing something else and I’ll be happy with that – and it will lead to something else.

What I’ve come to understand is that rather than a term with 2 halves, it’s a term with an action and a qualifier. ‘Being happy, where you are.‘ and I’ve realized that ‘where you are‘ for me IS moving forward. When I am right now is putting time and action between myself and an undesirable circumstance, and if I’m being truly honest with myself then I must acknowledge that every day since that hard situation happened is better than the day before it, because progress is cumulative.

The only place we allow our failures to define us is in the mirror, and most of us would never allow someone else to talk to us the way we talk to ourselves. You wouldn’t allow someone to talk that way about a close friend, and a close friend would come to your defense if someone was slinging slander at you.

I can’t speak for you, but the little fat kid I see in the mirror needs me to defend him. After all, he got me all the way here… and objectively, here is pretty great, and he worked really hard to do so.

If we’re going to live in a frame of mind where problems compound on each other (and most of us do, regrettably) then we must also allow our victories to compound, or we’ll never feel that sense of balance or accomplishment, and we’ll never really be able to ask ourselves: “Am I happy where I am?” without fearing the answer.

So we either DON’T allow our problems to compound, or we DO allow our victories to compound. That’s a matter of preference I suppose… but in the checks & balances, I’m willing to bet that a lot of us are closer to being happy where we are than we might think.