Being an Empath

Never let it be said that I am not a highly sensitive person. In fact, let it be said that I am. I am very sensitive. When I was a young adult and my mother still graced the earth, she informed  me that I was an "empath." If you have not heard that expression being bandied about as a thing you can be, it's simple: It is a person who is hardcore empathetic. If you are an empath, I probably just got your attention by mentioning the word. We are highly misunderstood, especially by our loved ones and sometimes even ourselves.

As a child I remember the exact moment in time that I learned empathy. And I believe that empathy isn't instinct but taught--nurture versus nature. The two next-door-neighbor boys had invented a rather suspect game. This game involved taking the tiny little golden brown moths that were flying happily around the flower beds and catching them, and then putting then through a series of "experiments." (These boys are probably testing pharmaceuticals on beagles today.) Anyway, I didn't understand that our game, which involved burying the little moths in the sand, digging them up, pulling various body parts off the moths, etc., etc., would harm them. I was simply too young and too inexperienced and too far under the age of reason to understand the ramifications of our actions.


My mother got wind of this little experiment and walked out into the front yard and took me aside.


"Teeny, (my childhood nickname) do you know you are HURTING the moths when you do that?
"I am?"
"Yes it hurts them. They cry when they can't breathe and when you damage their wings. They will probably even die. You will kill them. Some of them are dead already, honey."
Oh my God.
Seriously.


It is half a million years later, a lifetime later, and to write about it in this moment still upsets me. I can see my mother's sad face and her deep lovely eyes. I can feel her concern and her lack of anger toward me as she lovingly told me I had done something very wrong, even bad. She didn't yell, she wasn't sarcastic or mean, she didn't pull me away or scold. She simply and sadly and kindly told me the truth.

I could have been knocked over with a feather in that moment and then a millisecond after, I wanted to die. I couldn't believe the feeling that passed over me. I had willingly, willfully, and intentionally killed a helpless little creature.

Now, mind you, I didn't know that I was doing harm until that very moment and in that moment of intellectual and spiritual recognition my entire world changed. Forever. That teachable moment, that precious second in time and the loving and serious way that this lovely woman delivered her message made me not only get it like no other message has ever gotten through to me before, or maybe even after, but also, it changed me. I was altered forever in that moment.

The next time someone you know is considering putting their child in day care early or is getting flack from their loved ones about their insistence in spending as much time as possible with their preschool child instead of getting back to work, imagine what would have happened to me if my mother had not been there that day. Eventually, based on many factors, like for instance the fact that this woman was, indeed, my mother, I would have been able to discern right from wrong. More or less I would have grown up to be pretty much as I am, but isn't it true as we all look back at our lives we can often pinpoint those instants in which we are altered? There are so many considerations with this: How, we as parents and grandparents and teachers and even bystanders have so much responsibility toward each other, especially toward children. The value of kindness. The importance of empathy and compassion. The list goes on and on. Suffice to say, I remain eternally grateful that the person delivering the message was also the one I got lucky enough to win in the "mom lottery."

Flash forward.


I sit here in my office tonight and I think of many things. Of empathy and the sometimes incredible burden of being too empathetic. But what is too empathetic? I think of Jesus as the ultimate empath. I don't suppose he sat around bemoaning that he just cared too damn much about living creatures and it was getting him down. No. I think he was wise enough to see it as both a gift and a responsibility. I think that my mother (who was herself an incredibly spiritual person) not only taught me about empathy that day but also embodied empathy herself. She taught me that I had hurt a living creature while, in her moment of doing so, she had profound empathy for me. She felt my pain. She held me while I cried about it. She forgave me. And she helped me to forgive myself. She used to tell me that guilt wasn't necessarily a bad feeling. Guilt was an indication that you needed to change how you were acting. She also told me that pain and sadness were as much a part of life as joy--and that without one we could not fully appreciate the other.

We have a chance in every moment we exist on this planet to better it in some small way. We impact whatever and whomever we touch. We are mistaken if we say we are powerless. Indeed, the power to impact our world is with us at every second. We are magnificently powerful creatures-- creatures with minds and souls. We are given the ability to reason and to feel and with that comes the incredible responsibility to recognize that we as humans with souls are vessels.  Each day we have a choice about how we fill the vessel. Will we fill ourselves with light? Will we through intention, avoidance, or even just plain denial, allow darkness in? Will we pay attention enough to know we have a choice and that everyone--everyone breathing and thinking--can and must move through the world with intention. And when we forget, we must remind ourselves.

Being alive is a miracle. Humanity is not a static condition. We are constantly able to improve what it means to have humanity. That is greatness. Greatness is just goodness with an audience, really. And while you don't have to be great and no one may ever know how you strike out against the forces of evil in your own small way in each and every moment, it will always matter.

Just like it mattered to Teeny and the Moth.

When Things Change

Sometimes life is so good and so beautiful and so lovely that you want to clutch at it, wrap it up in a giant bear hug and never let it go. Sometimes you can stop for a moment and look around you and think, "God, I am so blessed because of (whatever it is, or whoever it is)--I am so lucky!" And then it changes.

Situations change. Tragedy strikes or, more often than not, the changes that occur seep into your life and you begin to see with increasing awareness that things that seemed to work so well have altered. Time has marched on, and while you wanted things to freeze-frame and stay perfectly in place, time has soldiered on. Time takes no prisoners, people change. Circumstances change. Everything is fluid. Things are always getting better or worse. There is no static moment in time--except in a picture that you post to Facebook or Instagram that you look at the next day and, by then, it's already ancient history.

That's why if you have a loved one or a partner or a person in your life who you enjoy completely and share an amazing bond with you should capture the moment with your feelings and your mind and your heart and your soul more readily than a camera. Because while it is nice to look at it on the Facebook scroll, it isn't the same as living it. While you are trying to get that perfect group photo you could be looking into someone's eyes--having a moment of recognition. You can love someone forever, but even with a love that lasts eternity you can be sure that one day, somehow, some way you will look into that shining face for the last time. You will have your last moment of recognition. Your last hug, your last kiss, your last shared raised eyebrow commiserating over something that is shared.

And we hunger for those shared moments. We eat them like candy, the best candy, but like all candy the box eventually empties. Doors close, days end. Experiences conclude. How do we deal with this? How do we avoid a perpetual state of regret?

Maybe we have to let go of our expectations of how it should be with everything and everyone we know. Maybe the job won't always be the same, the friends will come and go as people move and interests change. The milestones will serve to both unite and separate us. Maybe we need to face life with the knowledge that everything is fluid. This is brilliant for a horrible time--we can say, yes, it's just now and one day another good time will come, but it is less lovely for that moment that you feel the bliss. But bliss is a funny thing. It's a soap bubble of experience. You can see it and feel it and sense it, you can even hold it for just a millisecond, if you are careful and gentle and so very light with your touch. But it is just an instant. An instant. And then we must move on. We must leave the pain or the joy of each and every moment and move to the next one. Most days we leave one not-so- special moment and move to the not-so-special next moment--but it doesn't have to be that way. We can take the hand of our friend, our partner, or our child. We can look into people's eyes. We can be in the moment. We can be in this moment and then we can kiss it lovingly good bye. Send that last self, that self of a moment ago, off with the last selves of those we love, to play in the past.

What seems like it could be filled with overwhelming regret doesn't have to be that. Every new moment is absolutely fraught with possibility. We can have lots and lots of do-overs. Moment by moment, and all it takes is awareness. All it takes is a willingness to be aware, be present, and yes, not grab on too tight. Just loosen your grip. Let it be.

And maybe if we get outside ourselves on some level and think less about how it feels for us and what we are loosing and gaining in each and every moment and a little more about how everyone around us is thinking and feeling, maybe we will open ourselves to amazing new experiences. It doesn't mean you can fix things for other people--even though sometimes you can--it just means you can understand more, even if all you can do is understand and let them know.

When I was a little girl I remember a game that we played where we would lie, tummies down, on the grass and look at the little world we saw there. Tiny leaves and rocks and bugs--an ant making his way somewhere important. In an instant we changed the focus of our worlds and suddenly saw things from a new perspective. We are always free to do that, if it means focusing on someone else or something else for a moment or just changing focus. Looking at a book shelf in your house you have seen a million times without really seeing it. Remembering why those books and other objects are there. There are worlds of meaning in the smallest places and the smallest interactions between people. It's interesting to think about how you can change your perspective, pull away from a moment that doesn't please you just by shifting focus--in an instant.

But wherever you choose to focus your life, moment by moment, each moment passes and if we can embrace it more fully if we learn the grace of letting go of people and things to which we cling. If we can embrace the people in our lives without really holding on we will see more moments of bliss and more peace about each moment--whether it is good or bad.

I had a yoga teacher once who used to say, "Let go." She seemed to say it over and over and over again. In her class her gentle words would flow over me like a blanket of peace. She changed my life and I think, for me, it is important to remember those two words. And here are some more words that my heart is repeating that I want to share with you: Embrace and let go. Love and move forward. Live your life and look around you. Be and let it be.

Let it Be--The Beatles--all rights reserved

Namaste--

Beauty

It's not you, it's me

A woman I love dearly has been having a hard time. A man whom she thought she loved has unceremoniously and in fact, meanly, dumped her. And by dumped I mean the ugly, cruel, horrible way. This man said things to her to intentionally undermine her self concept, her femininity, her attractiveness and her self-esteem. He just went after her, balls to the wall, attacked her for no reason other than a personal outpouring of his own exit-strategy hostility.

Well first of all, this was completely classless and lacked any compassion and kindness and anything I could call "having a soul." It was an extreme example of the universe showing someone to be a complete asshole. The thing I have to wonder is, why? Why do people do things like this? Why are people so fooled about each other, and if they aren't fooled and there really was some context of love and good feeling there, why does a break up give anyone this sense of free reign to attack? The whole thing was like watching this woman slam into a brick wall of pain--except she didn't do it to herself, she just trusted someone who brutalized her. It was horrible to watch and we have all been there--I certainly have.

As humans we get terribly attached to each other. In love relationships we allow our partner to define us in some way. We let them into the most intimate parts of our being. We reveal ourselves on every level, and we put it all out there for them to (hopefully) love. In the case of doing this with someone compassionate and kind, even an ending has the potential for dignity and love and basic decency. But when someone misjudges their partner as being kind and then comes to find too late in the day that they were simply being "nice" while they were involved in the chase, the potential for disaster seems imminent and horrifying.

Watching my girlfriend go through this, I remembered the times this has happened to me. It is impossible for people involved in romantic love relationships to not have a yin and yang sort of give and take whereby they impact each other. Women especially create some level of their physical and sexual and feminine selves for and based on the reaction of the men they love. Women try to look good for the men they love. Men do this too. Everyone wants to be wanted by the person they adore--and wanted in every way. Victoria's Secret makes a billion dollar industry out of this need to be not only loved but physically adored by one's romantic partner.

So, as I sat and listened to my friend tell me of the hostility and brutality of her recent breakup, I offered to her that he didn't have control over her self concept and that her beauty was not defined by him. This is one hundred percent true, except it isn't. People in love, people who are in love and intimate are in a complicated give and take where they both affirm and embrace each other, where they adore and are adored, where they allow their partner to have an impact on their emotions--and thus, they give that person an intense power. The power to "complete" them and the power to wound them too. Is it wrong? No. Can it be incredibly destructive? Oh, yes.

I have been thinking about this a lot since we met for coffee the other day. I have been thinking about how it kills me to see my dear friend in so much pain and that all my platitudes (while true) about self-concept and personal power are not the whole picture. We give that special someone power over us. Power when they are given the key and let inside the Secret Garden. There is always a chance that the person whom we give a key uses their power unwisely. And that is when we must as individuals take back our power.

But that doesn't mean that there isn't that one special person who will never misuse their power (and it doesn't mean that lovers can't wound each other and recover and continue to love, perhaps even more deeply). But when people say they are looking for that "one true love" I believe they are saying they are looking someone they can trust completely inside their soul. There isn't a woman on the planet who isn't moved by the Carly Simon song lyric: "Hold me in your hands like a bunch of flowers." There isn't a woman on the planet who doesn't truly hope that this is the way she feels when she finally opens her soul to another being.

Whether a love relationship or not, we all have to be careful who we let in. The emotional lines between two individuals in relationship are always drawn in pencil.

I hope with all my heart that my friend will be alright. I have seen depression and I know it is nothing to mess with, and that a good friend can't assume their dear friends are okay, no matter what. That assumption is fraught with risk. People who care for each other need to be aware of each other's emotional health and safety. We need to watch our friends to make sure they are okay, we need to be aware of the pain of our loved ones. We must never assume people survive their break ups and flourish without loving hands and hearts helping them up.

Certainly to this man I would say he has done something truly evil. Sure, most people pass it off as an angry break up, but at what point are people responsible for how they hurt those who love them, or how they hurt anyone at all? I believe at every point. Compassion and kindness are part of everything to be valued in human interaction--beginnings, the long and sometimes troubled road of day-to-day existence and yes, even endings. We must always take care of each other. No matter what.

 

The Right Thing to Do- c. Carly Simon--all rights reserved

To my friend I wish an understanding of her own preciousness. I wish that for us all.

Assumptions, anger, bullies, anger, guns, anger, fear, anger and the wisdom of the Brady Bunch

People have the general notion that you shouldn't make assumptions. I remember I had a high school teacher who used to stand in front of the class and say, "You shouldn't assume, it makes an ass out of you and me." (Get it? U and ME?) Well, anyway, this same teacher had a daily nervous breakdown and sometimes when we were particularly awful as high school kids can be if they sense a weaker animal, he would take his thermos and take some sort of pill--I imagined these were his heart pills or his downers (AKA Mother's little helpers) and that his complete disgust with us coupled by his pain about being stuck with us rendered him unable to cope without medical assistance. At the ripe old age of 15, I had very little pity for this man. And granted, he was a pompous, unyielding, unhappy jerk, but still. Today I have more pity for him. I know the feeling of just absolutely feeling stuck and stressed and like I just can't take it and I admit I have reached into my bag of tricks and pulled out something to make myself feel better a time or two (or 500). So even though today I see eye-to-eye with the man on his Xanax usage, I don't see eye-to-eye with him on his rigid, annoyed, self-righteous attitude. If he would have taken himself and the situation a little less seriously, if he would have seen it for what it was--a class of basically okay, probably a little bored, over-energetic high school kids in a pretty mellow time in the history of high school, maybe, just maybe, he wouldn't have needed those pretty white pills. Remember, what Alice said, "Feed your head," isn't necessarily the answer, but I digress.

This saint of a man's biggest problem in my never-to-be-humble opinion was that he was wrong. You can and should be able to make a whole helluva lot of assumptions* about life, your friends, your family, your school, the place you work, the people at the grocery store and the person walking behind you in the parking structure. Your assumption is and should be that all of these people are for the most part operating with good and harmless intent. They aren't trying to screw you over or hurt your feelings, they aren't trying to make you feel bad about yourself or insult you, they aren't trying to cheat you or lie to you or hurt you. More likely than not they don't have a wish to kill you or maim you or even cut you off in traffic. The probable worst they are doing is being stressed themselves, or preoccupied with their own stuff, or at the very worst, self-centered. At their best, they are opportunities for you to have positive and happy interactions, at their worst they are just not paying much attention to you. You can and should assume some basic things about most people most of the time.

If you know someone well, if you love them and they love you, you can be reasonably sure that they are not sitting around in their quiet moments planning rude and insulting things to say to you to push your buttons. You can assume that if someone loves you they are not trying to hurt you. If they are, they don't love you. Even if they don't love you in most cases they still won't try to hurt you because they have that special thing I like to call basic human decency. Most of us have this and use it with everyone--the loves of our lives and strangers. It's basic. It's common. It's a no brainer. If you are reacting, you better check out your own heavy load of emotional baggage first. Is it you? Is it me?  Take a moment and own it if it's you. No one cares and the world will be saner if everyone has an actual fuse.

Example:
Person who loves me: Random statement. (I jump at this assuming they are trying to destroy me forgetting the entire context and history of our interactions, who I know this person to be, and how I actually know that they probably meant nothing by whatever random thing they said at all.)
Me: WTF? How can you be like this to me????? You suck. (bla bla bla bla bla bla)
Fight ensues.

Possible new example:
Person who loves me: Random statement. (I jump at this assuming they are trying to destroy me forgetting the entire context and history of our interactions, who I know this person to be and how I actually know that they probably meant nothing by whatever random thing they said at all. However, before I speak I take a moment and breathe. In. Out. In. Out.)
Me: Want a pizza?
Person who loves me: Sure!
Smiles and kissing, and whatever. Fade out.

So, personal and loving connections cured, let's move on to the rest of the world. Take technology, for instance:

Why do you suppose, in this instantaneous technological input age when nothing happens without everyone knowing in about five minutes, do we feel so attacked and at risk and afraid? My theory is we know too many bad things. In the long-ago day (any day, you pick, dawn of time to 1979), people just didn't have access to things as quickly. There were printed newspapers if you lived in a metro area twice a day. There was the evening news. People didn't walk around with a device in their hand that pinged them anytime there was a possibility of a problem. WARNING WARNING WARNING--something may happen. Look out Alice, look out, look out!

WARNING DANGER WILL ROBINSON~~~~~~~~

No, we went outside, we went places sans our parents, and in fact, here is just how crazy stuff was in our day: The other night I was watching a Brady Bunch rerun (please don't lie to me, you watch it too) and in this episode Mr. Brady told Cindy she could wait for Santa alone in the mall while he went to run an errand. She was six and she told him, "Get lost dude, I got this." And she did. My Brady Bunch watching companion exclaimed, as did I, about how totally bizarre this is today. Well, news flash people, she was perfectly safe (yeah, I know it was a TV show) but, still, she WAS perfectly safe, as were you when you went outside alone and rode your bike and played in the vacant lot and all the other stuff you did where you emerged unscathed--or maybe even scathed, but scathed is part of it, remember?  Cindy Brady is a representation of the collective attitudes we used to feel in this country not so very long ago. Kids were safe. That's what we thought and they mostly were.

A couple of other things for you to consider about this reality. Things just have not changed that much. Kids are still mostly safe, we just think they aren't. And guess what? All our fear and assumptions that we have to arm ourselves and prepare to protect ourselves from pillage and murder or worse are just trumped up, jacked up, scary emotions in overdrive from just plain hearing about too much bad stuff all the time. The reality is and will always be sometimes bad stuff happens to people. Kids have been occasionally mistreated at the hands of strangers since the world began.
Mostly strangers will help a kid not try to string him up from the nearest tree. So all this fear is rendering life a very unhappy place for all these kids that we scare the crap out of every day. Life was bad enough as children, don't you remember? (Just coping with the emotional chore of finding a place in the world being a kid in ideal circumstances is hard for kids.) And our parents were mostly calm about our safety. Mostly unconcerned. "Look both ways" was about as scary as it got.

My Brady Bunch watching companion and I decided that Nancy Reagan invented the notion of kids being unsafe. She invented "stranger danger" programs and DARE. She made scaring kids about their potential for sudden attack, addiction, STDs and the idea that their parents should be watched to see if they are trying to slip them a Sudafed, a government-mandated program. She made it curriculum. I personally like Mister Brady's approach. Look both ways and wait for Santa. You will be okay.

Additional theory: I took my child out of many of the DARE program activities claiming religious issues. Yes indeedy, I had a religion and it was: not to guilt and shame and scare the crap out of my child every single day at school. I taught her to not do drugs, I taught her to drink responsibly and socially. I taught her about sex and her responsibility to protect herself not only physically but emotionally. It's called parenting. I don't think it has to be curriculum.

Kids today don't have a chance. They are strung out about what can happen to them. They are sitting in front of their computers 24/7 where they have instant access to all the horrible things that are happening around the world and their parents are either scared out of their minds and overreacting by following their children around scheduling every single second of their lives or joining hands together at we-need-our-guns-so-we-can-kill-potential-murders rallys.

Additional theory: No wonder all our kids across the nation are stressed out freaks killing one another. You can't cyberbully someone if you aren't on the Internet all day. Real life bullies in real life have a far better chance of being caught because they are seen.

Remember when you didn't have something scheduled every single second? Kids like that. And no they don't get the Anarchist's Cookbook and make bombs when they find themselves without a karate class or a chess tournament to go to. They can't even get that book without the FBI tracing it and arriving at their door because of the Patriot Act anyway. (In fact, using those words in this blog in this moment probably has me on a "no fly" list. For real.) Kids chill in their unscheduled time or they play or they read or they sit in trees or they imagine stuff or they draw or they bug their sisters or they spill things or they watch TV. We did, right? What was wrong with our childhoods? I can't think of a thing really. So why all these reactionary parents derived from kids who experienced blissful peaceful, relaxing childhoods? Nancy Reagan. She is my fall guy. However, not to give Nancy a way out of this, but we all had to drink her Koolaid. We drank the Koolaid. Every time we give in to the incorrect notion that the world isn't mostly safe we are drinking more of it. A wise person once told me that statistically speaking the most ordinary outcome will be the most likely. That is just mathematics. You will be okay today and so will junior.

So here's some anarchy for you: Let's give junior some time off for good behavior. Let's assume rightly that if our kids (and grandkids) aren't in a bazillion groups and play experiences, and organized events and bla bla bla they will live and probably thank you for it. They need down time, so do we. We had relaxing childhoods. Now many of us have kids who are having kids. How did we treat our kids? What did we assume about their safety? In this case, let me tell you something, my poor old teacher was right. Sometimes assumptions do make an ass out of you and me.

Additional theory: Down time in a house with guns? You do the math. How good  are your locks and how excellent is your memory and when did you last leave the iron on or the stove or forget the location of your keys? Well, then you can't possibly guarantee the safety of your kids in your house with your guns. Oh, and for all you who are gonna give me the "home invasion" diatribe, I have lived through one, yes, I talked my way out of it using my wits and someone named Jesus (universal power, whatever you are naming it). I am pretty sure Jesus was happy I didn't open up with my assault weapon even in the midst of my own assault. Did I get emotionally scarred? Yes, of course. Was it better than murdering someone and the emotional ramification of that? Ask a (insert your favorite)war vet next time you pass him on the street begging you for money you won't give him because you are too self righteous. (Answer for those who don't get the sarcasm: Yes.)

For God's sake, do something peaceful. I'm tired of yelling for peace. It's counter intuitive. So don't go to the gun rally and don't be so damn worried about yourself, your kids, or your grandkids. I think it's time to get off the reality shows and back to a reality that is more like my favorite fantasy. Mister Brady will thank you. And look both ways, hold hands when crossing and don't overuse your Xanax. Good advice in any world.



Love--

Beauty

* Assumptions are like affirmations. what we think about expands. If you think it's all good, then a lot of it will be good, if you think it's all bad, well then, you know.

The Face You Deserve

Mirrors are amazing instruments. The ultimate instrument of self-reflection. Through them we see ourselves, our faces. We see our expressions, we see what life is doing to us, what the elements are doing to us, what our health is doing to us, and what our souls are trying to tell us.

At 20 we have the faces that God granted us. Just the beginning of mood and personality leaving permanent expressions. Just the beginning of too much smoking or too much booze. Just the beginning of seeing our faces as maps, road maps of how we live our lives. At 20 a couple of nights sleep, a little sun, a little hydration and we are back in shape. We all have lineless, faultless faces.

But at 50? What do we have then? We have the faces we have earned. The battle scars, the abuse, the care, and what we have thought about, are all there to be reflected on our faces. The look in our eyes, the lines. The continual moods have begun to leave road maps that can't be erased. How have we lived? What have we thought? Who are we? It's right there to see. The world sees your face everyday. Every exchange you have, every person you meet, everyone you know, knows you by your face.

Put your best face forward. FaceBook. Face the world. Your face.



Have you looked at the standard face of plastic surgery recently? The other night I saw a commercial for Nutrisystems with a celebrity I have really always liked, Marie Osmond--but now she has purchased the every-scared-woman face. Plastic surgeons are all making the same woman, over and over again. And now Marie has the face. She gave her face away, she threw it away. Every woman who was afraid to let her own face tell the story of her life has joined her in her quest to do what? To appear young and beautiful--but at the cost of losing something that should have been precious to her--her own face.

So what is the story of my life? My face will tell you. Have I been mostly kind? Have I laughed? Have I slept? Have I let go of anger? Have I lived my life with an understanding that the cup is half full or half empty? Who am I? What sort of personal habits have I had? Have I smoked or drank a lot? Have I worshipped the sun? Have I lived with moderation? What have I done to myself? What thoughts have I concentrated on? How have I treated others? How do I feel? 

What of aging gracefully? We aren't meant to remain 18. We aren't meant to look forever 29. We are meant to age gracefully and until society will allow anyone over 30 to be beautiful we will forever have rich plastic surgeons and women who trade in their very own faces for pretend masks that someone, somewhere, calls the "in" young face.

We are meant to get smarter as we get older. We are meant to get wiser. With that wisdom we are meant to get kinder and calmer and hopefully happier. We are meant to embrace ourselves as beautifully aged. Lovely, wise and kind.

Who sold us this bill of goods (especially in the United States) that there was only one way to look? How did we decide a young perfect face and an entirely too thin body was was the ultimate goal? I find it hard to believe that the advertising and fashion industries could dictate to the people of the world what defines feminine beauty.

I am constantly amazed at what people in the world find interesting and valuable. Case in point: I have been writing this blog for almost two years, during this time I have written 47 articles. Some have been enjoyed by multiple readers around the world, others have been widely received because of content (The Good Man for Kirk Knipp, for example), but no one article has had even close to the hits that the photo gallery of obese women has had. This one article has thousands of hits and my other articles hundreds. The search words have amazed me--"funny fat women", "no fat chicks", "fat humor". The reason I don't pull this photo gallery, which I obviously posted for far different reasons than it is used for, is that I live with the hope that one in every thousand people will read another post, or read my captions for that gallery. It is hard to not be discouraged with these numbers and what I believe they mean about who visits this blog. Is enlightenment so dear? Is human kindness so lost? Every time I look at all those hits I have a hard time not losing faith in humanity.

There is a snobby, elitist joke I have always found amusing: "When your IQ gets to a hundred, Sell!" The fascination that these some 12,000 people have at the pictures of grossly obese woman on my blog make me think of this joke. Who are these people? Who educated them?  What can they be thinking?

So this blog continues to be my candle. My one candle in what I am hoping isn't a dark digital night. I urge you to share my blog with people who would appreciate it and even more, I urge you to be that light in your own life, to be the light and to reach out.

We have to keep trying. We have to keep striving. We have to let kindness rule us and we have to drive out the darkness. I don't care who you are or what God's church you have joined. Kindness is my God. Loving kindness.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?

YOU are beautiful. Be YOU.

Beautiful--Chistina Aguilera, all rights reserved, c. 2004

Reflect goodness. Be the light.

God bless,

Beauty

The Wax

Disclaimer: The following article is written expressly for my woman readers. This is going to get intense, guys, so if you secretly read on, you have only yourself to blame. BnB ;)

 



Ritual is a lovely thing. It implies that survival is under control enough to indulge in something a bit higher on Maslow's hierarchy. Beauty ritual is that for me. It is a way to state to myself and to the world that I have handled the emergencies well enough and effectively enough in my life to be at a place where I can  think about adornment. It's not a superficial thing, no. It's a way of acknowledging distance from personal emergency.

Case in point: I recently had some dental surgery with what has turned out to be, yet again, another dentist I absolutely will not want to work with again. After feeling for several days after like I had been taken out in a back alley and beaten within an inch of my life, I went to the emergency hospital. A series of blood work ensuring I am not dying of a staph infection resulting in an uncovered 350.00 even though I have the "best" insurance on the planet, leaves me rethinking surrendering to any emergency short of flat lining. I am sick of problems, frankly. As people approaching midlife we are experiencing human frailty. We are seeing that we should have taken better care of our teeth, that we should have flossed. Or we are seeing that inactivity and sitting behind a desk has caught up with us, or that the human animal's original life expectancy has not evolved enough on an evolutionary scale to include parts that last. Illness in all of its forms just simply sucks. It is the ultimate time waster, I resent it. I resent giving my time and energy to it. I resent having it as focus.

So when it has to be a focus for us--whether my allergies or asthma, or dental work, or your ulcer or diabetes or anything else, it occurs to me that we are giving away the precious seconds to it. We are trading moment by moment our lives away. How will we focus? I would far rather focus on something beautiful, something above survival, just for the sanity it brings.

And who is to say that a positive focus doesn't change reality? I think it does. "That which we think about expands." I refuse to think about things I don't want in my life. That includes illness. So enough said, onto the WAX.

For about a billion years women have been adorning themselves. Cleopatra was no stranger to the henna rinse of the rings of eyeliner, Marie Antoinette had some pretty serious dos. Women have always wanted to gild the lily. I am all for it. Maybe it's spa mentality, maybe its just knowing that if I can take a moment to get a massage or do my hair, or fix my make up or buy perfume I am enjoying living in my body and enjoying the pleasure it gives me. It means I have some pride in myself, I have some healthy ability to indulge myself.

Now obviously this can be taken to an extreme. I just reread a recent news story that pops up occasionally about some twisted woman who has had multiple plastic surgeries in an effort to look like Barbie. In spite of the awesome shoes, Barbie, you are seriously plastic. However, I do commend her attempts to run a veterinary clinic, teach underprivileged children, pilot an airplane and keep up a dream house, all while working some serious damn "f-me" pumps. You go, Barbie. Now Barbie's real-life twisted sister with all the plastic surgery, naw. This girl is messed up and I have about a million different better uses for her money like first a great shrink and failing that a very large donation to a soup kitchen. So, while I am not about to get cut into pieces for a beauty ritual I might get dyed and plucked and sprayed a bit for the joy of enjoying my own skin.

Enter the WAX. (This is your last chance to leave, gentlemen, I suggest you do.)

I have been in recent years someone who has given up the eyebrow pluck. It is just a huge pain and as all of us ladies know in recent years it's a very tricky thing to see the reflected and offending eyebrow hair in a mirror clearly. So I have taken to eyebrow waxing. It's relatively inexpensive, its quick and easy, unless your stylist has some sort of DTs they can't mess it up too much (Ha, more later on this one!) In short, it's a great fix to an annoying problem. And Voilà! I am suddenly five years younger looking with these great big baby greens all open and wide-eyed.

So being a fan of the eyebrow wax it has occurred to me that being an animal I have lots of other interesting places I can wax. This alarmed me and embarrassed me. I had all sorts of preconceived notions about "who" did this and how they must look and that they were probably all porn stars or at the very least extremely young in un-lived in (but adult) bodies. I see everyone who has ever had anything other than an eyebrow wax as about 27 and a supermodel. Even though, I still really wanted to give it a go. I thought it would be a perfect bathing suit solution. I just had it in my mind that I wanted to do it. A friend of mine (younger, thinner, not sporting a post-baby body) did it and raved about the results. I thought I would do it when I reached some perfect pinnacle of perfection. I had some magic number in my head about weight, I had some ideal number of months of workouts being consistent in my life that would render me worthy of this beauty ritual.

And then I went to California on a trip and happened to see the waxing studio near my Massage Envy and I thought I could do this in an out of town location and if something horrible happened it would be like the ultimate in Vegas slogans--what happened there, stayed there. So I booked an appointment.

Now it is true that when I had the eyebrow portion of the treatment done an out of control wax brush dripped wax on my beautiful haircut and the technician was actually forced to give me a manicure scissors so I could cut the wax-covered wisp of hair near my forehead off myself. I am sure she was mortified and frankly I'm no snob--I have taken a manicure scissors to my shining glory for far less. I assured her it was no big deal.

The other part. Well, let me tell you. If you are going to get a bikini wax, a full or even the ultimate Brazilian, do not, for the love of God, watch people doing it or reacting to their first time on YouTube. There is such a thing as too much information. Do what I did. Take a number of Ibuprofen. Have a cocktail or if you object to drinking and driving take a half a Valium. And go. Don't judge yourself. These people do this for a living. They expect you to patronize their establishment. They don't think you are walking in to have your cards read, they know you want hair ripped off your body with hot wax. Live a little.

So how do I feel? I think it has been some combination of a silky mermaid swimming lithely through the ocean feeling the water move against my skin in some sort of natural whole-body embrace and a female superhero. Or maybe I feel like you do when you have incredibly sexy lingerie under your business suit. You know and they don't know, but the secret energizes you. It adds some subtle power to your movements; you are self aware in a luxurious, almost decadent, way. If I was candy, I would be Godiva. I feel seriously pleased with myself.

But more than the thing I did itself is the realization that I reached some sort of level of self acceptance where I suddenly felt I didn't need to hide, where I could revel in my body for itself with its flaws and its history and its own special tattoos of life experience.

Do  I suggest you do it? Not necessarily, but I do suggest you do that one thing you have put off that you would really like to do for yourself, for your indulgence, for your body--and I suggest you do it today.

Love--
Beauty

Being Lost

There are times in life when you feel lost. The things you valued before seem to slip away and the things you are currently focusing on don't seem to have the personal gratification they once did. Life seems to lose focus and days slip away. Something captures your attention, whether trivia or minutia, whether stress or illness, whether time-wasters or even focusing on others to the exclusion of yourself--and suddenly the direction and the motivation you once had seems to slip from your fingers. You don't even have the wherewithal to regroup and figure out what it is that draining your energy.

This lack of direction and loss of time flies directly in the face of something terribly important. Time is short.  Jim Croce said it best when he said, "There never seems to be enough time to do the things you want to do, once you find them." He was far too right about that sentiment. I imagine him spending the last moments of his life reciting the lyrics to Time in a Bottle and thinking, "Damn, I really have got to learn not to take everything so literally."

One of my favorite movies is Harold and Maude. I love over-the-top humor, especially if it's eccentric with an underpinning of sentiment and kindness and joy. Harold and Maude has all sorts of things for me. Harold is bizarre and creative and plays with his death and mocks his own and everyone else's life while taking everything incredibly seriously and with earnest amazement. Maude is a young/old soul in an ancient body who manages to be incredibly beautiful and sexy and earthy and insane and innocent and wise and loving and realistic at once. It's a love story full of breaking rules and the union of two lost souls, two quirky and should-have-never-met people who some how, some way find each other. We should all be so lucky to find that one-in-a-million love, that soul mate who reaches into the very depth of us and validates who we are, who sees us and with whom we share precious instances of pure joy. Gallows humor and joy and innocence and love and irony all go together in life. Harold and Maude fall in love and express it physically, making a taboo age difference irrelevant. What other people think about them becomes as ridiculous as forgetting your own name or that the sun rises or the smell of a rose.

I probably relate more to Harold than Maude today. I see something wildly amusing in pretending to hang one's self while sporting a Hello badge" with the message, "HELLO MY NAME IS: Goodbye Cruel World. He is all farce and yet deadly earnest as he doles out macabre punishments to his mother on a daily basis, punishing her for not seeing him, for not recognizing him and for having such detailed and exacting expectations about who he should be.

Add to that a Cat Stevens, pre-terrorist [!], score and suddenly the movie is filled with a radiant joy and some sort of supernatural understanding that seems only to happen in darkened theaters making you feel, if for an instant, that you have some perfect knowledge of How Things Should Be. It usually ends about the time the credits roll, but before they do there is an unmistakable and glorious sense of rightness with the world that just never lingers when the lights go on.

So back to being lost. Harold is lost, I think. I think he finds himself through Maude; a wise and loving friend who loves him completely and then leaves. She leaves to die. And even though, for some, this might be the ultimate betrayal, she knows something that Harold senses. She knows that life is eternal and simply floats away like a weary and beautiful butterfly. The lesson is that we all take responsibility for coming and going as we please in this life and that true compassion and love aren't about attachment but about loving while letting people live in your life with an open door policy of being invited to stay, but not your prisoner.

Maybe being found is really just taking the time to pay attention to yourself. In a world of stupid demands and really tedious circumstances it's easy to stop listening to your own decreasingly loud cries for help. Your frustration and pain and anguish and bitchiness are more often than not, just your own cries for your own attention. No one can hear you but yourself and if you aren't listening you are the architect of your own abandonment. The first place to get seen, to get heard, to get acknowledged and to get forgiveness, love, acceptance, and a friend is the mirror. It's not an act of narcissism, it's an act of self-preservation. We spend our lives shouting, "See me!" When really all we need to do is see our selves.

In this high-tech interweb world that I still think is the single most amazing thing to happen in my lifetime, we have a tendency to social media ourselves into personal submission. I think I simply ceased to be in my quest to be heard. I have gone away now to listen to myself. I have spent years trying to bang pots and pans together loudly and consistently enough to never, ever hear my own soul's pleading.

And so in closing, maybe something from Cat Stevens who I still think is a great tragedy of some sort that I can't quite put my finger on. If anything, just the fact that he stepped away from his music to focus on his religion seems confused and unnecessary. After all, music is a form of God in expression. I miss him. But this isn't the time or place to lose focus again and go off on poor Cat. Let him seek his own voice while we take a moment to listen to his heart:

 



Oh very young what will you leave us this time.

You're only dancing on this earth for a short while.

And though your dreams may toss and turn you now.

They will vanish away like your Daddy's best jeans, denim blue, fading up to the sky.

And though you want him to last forever you know he never will, you know he never will.

And the patches make the good bye harder still.

Oh Very Young, c. Cat Stevens, all rights reserved, Earth Tour, 1976

 

 

The short dance to me means it's high time to get my tutu on.

 

 

Love--

 

Beauty