And Now For Something Completely Different

So, gratitude is a tool that I know is effective and that I haven’t been using lately, which I think is painfully obvious in what I’ve been blogging about. But I’ve had a couple of conversations with my youngest children that it does me good to remember. I’ve been pretty preoccupied with the negative shenanigans of an older child but that doesn’t define my life as a parent.

First kid (FK) is talking to me while we are driving from somewhere to somewhere and telling me about a boy FK has met in the new high school. FK is pretty sure this boy is on the autistic spectrum given that FK has a sibling who has Asperger’s syndrome.  FK makes a point of talking to this boy who is in a couple of the same classes because “I know how hard it is for Sibling to make friends because of having trouble socially”. Now FK is getting feedback from friends that “ewww this boy likes FK” and FK’s response is “so? it’s kind of a compliment if someone likes you.” FK has done the same for another kid that shares a class – he seems like he might be gender fluid but FK doesn’t have a problem with that and so compliments him on his heels and sits with him in class, having made a new friend in him.

Another car conversation left me hiding tears. FK has a younger sibling (we’ll say NK). We’d gone to pick up NK together prior to a volleyball scrimmage because FK wanted to say hi to some of the teachers. As we were making the rounds, the math teacher comments “FK did you know you are NK’s hero?”  In the car, FK asks NK about it and NK explains how inspiring FK is in various ways.  In the past FK has expressed frustration at the very existence of NK (“why didn’t you just stop with me?”) and while I’ve always told FK one day that opinion would change, it isn’t like I could do much about it.  Thankfully, time really does change things and the relationship is different now.

Its a reminder to me that parenting is different from what we seem to think it is.  I have responsibilities to try to “train up” my children in certain directions – the shorthand I use with them is that my job is to make them good room mates for someone someday – but there are lots of things I have no control over. I can’t change one child disliking another or wishing that other child had never been born.  I can’t force a child to be nice to “weird kids” or to do class work or to stay out of trouble or really to do or not do many of the things we think we have control over. I can do my best to model good behavior, apologize for bad behavior, provide a safe home, food, etc…but for me, I think the most important thing is to remember that I’m no more responsible for the behavior that brings happy tears to my eyes than I am the behavior that brings angry/sad tears to my eyes.  They are their own people, with their own quirks and foibles and gifts and struggles. I provide a trellis, they grow in their own unique ways.

I’m still struggling with being angry – I think it makes it easier for me to let go of stuff that I can’t control (like getting a diploma or not) when I really, really want to control it. Detaching in anger isn’t the best way, but I’m not quite there yet when it comes to detaching in love, with peaceful feelings on my end. If history is any guide, I will get there.

Another thing to be grateful for.

Pretty Much Covers It.

1. Identify specifically what is making you unhappy or dissatisfied.
2. Determine if the things that are making you unhappy can be changed.
3. If they be changed, enact a plan to change them.
4. If they cannot be changed, determine if you can find a way to live with them and still be healthy and happy.
5. If you cannot live with them, figure out how to move on.

My Pants are NOT on Fire!

So, what to do about accepting how you’re put together?

I have a chronic condition, the details really aren’t important, but this illness predisposes me to being a liar. I know that sounds odd but the truth of the matter is, mental illness (or as I prefer it brain disease) often has some pretty odd symptoms. Frustrating symptoms. Symptoms that definitely make you seem like a bad person who chooses to do bad things*. My brain disease is such that if I’m not doing what needs doing to control it, it pushes me to lie about important stuff, lie about unimportant stuff, lie whenever I’m feeling uncomfortable which is pretty much all the time because I don’t like being a liar. I REALLY don’t like being a liar. Vicious cycle anyone? That’s actually one of the official diagnostic criteria for this particular brain disease – doing things that directly conflict with your deeply held moral and ethical values.

I had a situation last week where something happened. Something that could have gotten me into a lot of trouble. I knew I’d done nothing wrong. I also knew, because of my brain disease, people who knew about it might not believe me. It all worked out okay, we figured out what did happen. The people to whom I had to report (for lack of a better term) believe me. They believed that I hadn’t done anything wrong. Here’s the thing – I had to wrestle with the fact that they might not believe me, and they would be perfectly justified in not believing me. They know my story, they know my history, and they know I could be lying again. So even though there was a happy ending to this particular story, I’m left pondering the reality that I have a chronic incurable (though manageable) disease that will always influence how believable I am, depending on who’s being asked to do the believing.

To be honest (since that’s what I’m doing LOL), I could have solved the problem at least a couple of different ways with just a little bit of a lie. Quite possibly, no one would have suspected which would have (sorta) solved the whole problem. But it would have been lying, even if just a little one with no real victim.  Except myself, of course. Because, that might have just started a whole cascade of my brain disease getting active again – no longer in remission. I do not want that, ever.

So what do you do? Well, you tell the truth. Even if you know people may not believe you. Even if there’s a big temptation to feel sorry for yourself because you KNOW you are telling the truth. If it seems like I’m kinda patting myself on the back, well, yeah, I am.  Because I didn’t lie.  I knew the stakes were potentially high, I knew I could take an “easy” way out and I didn’t. When you’ve got a brain that’s had years of shootin’ the moves to get out of trouble, this is progress.  This is something to be thankful for.

It’s a funny place to be in, accepting the fact that people might not believe me, even when they safely could. And it’s actually okay if they don’t believe me because they do have reasons. Really the only thing that matters is am I telling the truth? Am I doing everything I’m supposed to? Am I being honest? If I can say yes to all of that then whatever happens happens. It’s a funny place to be in, but it feels like maybe I’ve grown up a little bit. Like maybe that was one of the reasons it all happened in the first place. I love it when I’m given the chance to see good coming out of something that felt really awful while it was happening. Helps the next hard thing not be quite as scary.

And beats back that damn brain disease that wants to lie.

*when in fact, to my thinking, you are actually a person with a bad equation, doing the best you can (which might not be all that great at all).

Travelling From One State to Another

So last Sunday On Being had an interview with a Vietnamese monk named Thich Nhat Hanh. Something struck me, something that’s not exactly new to me, but it struck me in a different way than it had before. The idea of suffering. I know that a part of Buddhist teaching is that human suffering is the issue, and the problem is our desires. Or at least something like that.

Mad Season, River of Deceit.  So then this song came on.  Guess I’m supposed to be pondering suffering. (If you have Amazon Prime, you can listen to it for free)

The monk was talking about how to have compassion for others. How to look and see what their suffering is, then have compassion on them, because they are suffering. I’m not saying that’s not a good thing, I think it is a great thing, actually, and I try to do it, if only to keep myself from behaving badly when other people are difficult. But what I really got to thinking about was looking at our own suffering. Because suffering sucks big time.

The lives of the people around me (and my own) really aren’t that bad. We aren’t living in a war zone, or in famine.  I know there are people in the U.S. who do have some pretty rough circumstances, I’m not talking about that – I’m talking about the relatively (or even absolutely) privileged lives that my community experiences.  What I’m thinking about is that being sad isn’t suffering.  Nor is being mad, for that matter.  Even being really, really, REALLY sad (or mad). Being disappointed isn’t suffering.  Having someone dislike (or hate!) you isn’t suffering.

It might seem a little trickier when we’re talking physical frustrations, rather than emotional ones. But I think it’s still true that having a bad disease isn’t suffering. Having a chronic condition isn’t suffering. Having a horrible injury that disables you isn’t really suffering, not in and of itself. (I at least have a bit of personal experience with trying separate chronic physical pain from suffering). Having someone physically abuse you isn’t suffering. (uh oh…dangerous?)

What struck me as I listened to the interview with Thich Nhat Hanh was not just how important it is to see other people’s suffering but that it is important to identify our own suffering – where in our lives do we suffer?  Because then we can have compassion on ourselves and that’s the first step toward relieving it. Have you ever noticed that there are people who have absolutely horrible things happen to them, or who live in what seems like unspeakable difficulty & danger and yet, they also seem essentially happy?  Or maybe hopeful in a completely nonsensical way? At the least, they do not appear to be suffering or miserable.  What in the world is that?

I think its a choice.  Suffering is a state of mind and we have a choice about it.  Suffering may just be triggered when we try to change or influence something completely outside of our power. Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t EASY to do the things that need doing to keep the suffering mindset at bay.  I’m just now coming off of a couple of weeks where my physical body Just. Would. Not. Behave.  It sucked.  Chronic, constant pain makes everything more difficult.  And I most definitely got frustrated, got sad, got afraid…complained (a little, though I tend more toward stoic martyrdom).  Felt sorry for myself. But I did have a choice and when I chose to start doing more of the things that help with my mindset…well, my body was still being difficult but it became not such a life sucker after all.  Maybe most importantly, I didn’t beat myself up for not being this perfectly serene person throughout the whole episode.  I found some compassion for the struggling me and honestly, that’s probably the most remarkable thing about the whole time.  Maybe the “reason” for it, or at least the redemption of it.  Because self-compassion isn’t something I’m all that good at.

Or maybe life just happens as it is going to and accepting THAT fact is truly the best thing I can do.