Opening That Can Of Squirmies

06 Sep 2024 15 Comments

by writingforselfdiscovery in wisdom, Writing Tags: , , , , ,

I watched Fixer Upper, enthralled as Chip and Jo Gaines renovated old houses. Then Magnolia, Joanna’s magazine, arrived on the scene with inspiring interior design ideas, delicious recipes, and pertinent articles. It’s one of the only periodicals besides Astronomy magazine I read cover to cover. (A nice right brain, left brain balance, wouldn’t you say?)

Magnolia’s summer 2024 edition has a story at the end: Chip Gets the Last Word. He talks about loving the demolition process in old houses, but not necessarily for the thrill of destruction. For him, he says, it’s more about discovery, the potential to uncover a treasure beneath the scarred and often ugly surface. At the end he writes, Maybe we’re all built to break things open, then to build ourselves back up again. That way we never fully lose the pieces that make us whole.

You know me, I embrace going deep, and, boy! Oh, boy! His essay sent me hurtling to the depths of my psychological past in search of those pieces. The hard work of my construction project enabled me to avoid opening that can of squirmies. But something lurked in the shadows, and now that the work was done there were no more excuses. Time to address the skeleton in the closet…the elephant in the room. The article was timely.

Breaking things open in the subconscious isn’t easy. Stuff gets buried, especially painful or shameful episodes in our personal history. It isn’t like taking a sledgehammer to a wall. But when something triggers an undesirable response, it’s a cue to investigate the why, to sift through layers of avoidance, denial, deflection, delusion, and figure it out so we can heal. So we can recover the pieces that make us whole.

I’m dealing with one of those avoidance/denial things right now, a very old pattern that I don’t want to repeat. Full disclosure. Here goes!

I’m restless. I have uprooted my life over and over again to seek new thrills, new horizons, new challenges. I know this about myself yet I’ve been unable to put that demon to death. Where did it come from, the inability to stay satisfied? The insatiable need for something more?

I’ll admit at the moment I’m afraid. I’ve created an idyllic place to retire. It’s taken perseverance, time, energy, creativity, inspiration, and dogged persistence to get here. And now…

it’s finished.

Will that itchiness that makes me squirm in my own skin return? Will what I’ve created be enough? Can I settle for peace, ease, the warmth of family, stability, a predictable life?

Here’s what I learned as I backpedaled through childhood. Work was praised. Accomplishments were rewarded. Travel was idealized. Expectations were high. I remember as clearly as if it were yesterday holding mother’s hand as we walked out of the classroom on the last day of kindergarten. At the door, my teacher stopped us. “Sherry, I expect great things from you,” she said. I was six years old.

I expect great things from you. What does that even mean?

She was my first teacher. The voice of authority. I respected her, performed at my best for her, lived and breathed for her approval. And I’ve never stopped.

That’s it, isn’t it?

Part of me got stuck at six years old. My entire life, I was still trying to please her, never quite satisfied with my accomplishments, always chasing the elusive expectation of greatness.

If I’d been a different sort of child, her statement might have passed right over me. But I was a serious little girl, hungry for affirmation. I had to win every race, ace the tests, be the best.

She couldn’t have known the heavy burden she lay on my shoulders that day. How her words burned into my soul and shaped my life.

At seventy-four-almost-five, I shouldn’t be worrying that this isn’t enough. Holding my breath hoping it is. Feeling a bubble of panic prickling my chest as I envision the future. I know what I want and I have it. All the boxes are checked. That’s a first for me. And, Oh! My! God! It’s scary!

Wisdom from Never-Never Land

07 Jul 2018 11 Comments

by writingforselfdiscovery in Bali, Uncategorized, wisdom, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

 

In that groggy place suspended between dreams, I often get my clearest insights. Inspiration lurks there and I have to be quick to capture it before it dissolves into the murky shadows of Never-Never Land.

It’s fortunate on such mornings that I live alone. When I leap out of bed, throw covers on the floor, dash across the room, stub my toe, hobble to the table, scrabble among the papers for a pen, and write furiously without being able to see the words because it’s still that dark, anyone watching would have to laugh…I have to laugh!

Sometimes I return to my cozy nest and immediately fall back to sleep. When I awake again an hour or so later, I have no memory of my pre-dawn brilliance, throbbing toe aside, until I sit down with my first cup of coffee and see the scribbled note.

That’s what happened this morning.

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When I looked at what I’d written, the concept my subconscious mind had been chewing on all by itself with no help (or hindrance) from me came back in a flash. The more I considered it, the more it made sense. Here’s the gist.

1 – 20 Lost.     From birth to around twenty years old, we’re not our own. The adults in our lives make the plans. They mold us, scold us, and hopefully we arrive at adulthood fairly unscathed. Those years are lost in the sense that we don’t control them.

20 – 60 Learning.     I’d like to say that we have things pretty well figured out by age forty or so. But I didn’t. I was still repeating the same stupid mistakes I’d made in my 20’s and 30’s. They wore different clothes and had new faces but underneath those choices were driven by the damaged sense of self that hadn’t changed since childhood. Damaged or not, our child-rearing, career-building years are spent learning.

60 – ?  Living.     There should be another category tucked between 50 and 60 called Transforming. It’s a time of reckoning. The kids have gone on to start their own learning years. The nest is empty. If we’re still married there’s nothing to distract us from our mate any longer. It’s just the two of us trying to remember why.

And we change. It’s impossible not to. But is it conscious change or unconscious? If we’re aware of the growth opportunity and work with it, we’ll advance into our sixties wiser, making good decisions for ourselves and modeling positive aging for others. If the change is unconscious we may go to the grave still making the same mistakes.

The morning insights could have stopped there.

But my subconscious has a mind of its own and it likes to do math. (This is definitely not me.) What it came up with was so simple and obvious I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it myself.

Bear with me now. We’re going to throw away years 1 – 20, we had no control over them anyway. From 20 – 60, then, are forty years of self-management, probably much of it spent meeting expectations, shouldering responsibilities, keeping the nose to the grindstone, the pedal to the metal, with a two-week vacation thrown in now and then to maintain sanity.

But consider this: our life expectancy in North America is around eighty years. Think about all that happened between ages 20 to 40, then from 40 to 60. Now we have another 60 to 80 ahead, one-third of our adult life yet to be lived. My mother at 90, still works out five days a week, beats the pants off the others at Bingo, and pretty much rules the roost in her assisted living facility. So where am I going with this?

Don’t waste the Living years.

What did you always wish you could do but never did? Make a plan and do it. Have you neglected exercise and proper diet? Start now to implement healthy habits. Does the cost of living where you are prohibit retirement? Move. I did, and it was the best decision I ever made. Did you fail to finish your degree? Check out your state’s Statutes. In Minnesota senior citizens can attend college tuition free. Maybe your state has a similar ruling.

Live like dying isn’t an option.

It’s not denial, it’s grabbing hold of the greatest gift we’ve ever been given, life, and running with it…wee wee wee, all the way home.