What do you show up for?

In December our community was hit with an unusual blast of winter snow. Some report up to 11 inches fell in less than a day. This pretty much shuts this Southern town down. In the quiet of the early morning, when I knew that there was no need to get out of stretchy pants, comb my hair or shower, I sat by the fire and thought about a recent article I had read and its implications for the future of the world. Or at least, the future of Northern Virginia. Here’s what I wrote:

Calls poured into Arlington Country’s police department this week. The reason was unexpected. The local Cheesecake Factory was giving away 40,000 pieces of their signature cheesecake to celebrate their anniversary. The promotion clogged roads, a fistfight broke out, one person was hospitalized and another charged with disorderly conduct. All for a free slice of cheesecake.

It makes me wonder on this snowing Virginia morning, snuggling with my grand dog in front of a cozy fire - what do I show up for? What would be compelling enough to torpedo me out of this recliner and into the cold. What would be worth getting jammed up in traffic and willfully breaking out in “fisiticuffs” (a quote from the AP article), all in the pursuit of...what?

I love cheesecake; but don’t you think that most of the people who entered the fray could have afforded to pay for one piece of cheesecake without all the hassle? I wonder if the great cheesecake grab of December 2018 was more about winning than noshing. It would be easy to enter into the competition. The victory was assured. All participants had to do was show up.

What am I willing to show up for? What does it cost me? What am I willing to pay?

In Brene Brown’s newest book Dare to Lead she writes, “The courage to be vulnerable is not about winning or losing, it’s about the courage to show up when you can’t predict or control the outcome.”

Resolutions, the ones that I suspect really matter, need to be more about vulnerability and courage than they are about winning or losing. But most of my resolutions are about achieving; striving; beating; having; acquiring. If that’s the case, if I can extrapolate from Brown’s perspective, the trouble with my resolutions is about what I’ve chosen to be resolute about and why I have chosen that particular resolution.

Could that be a problem you struggle with too?

To be continued...

We may not change

We’re one week into a new year. What are you going to do about it? Set resolutions? Give up and NOT set resolutions because it’s too discouraging when you have failed by the third week in January? Yep. Me too. I have a love/hate relationship with resolutions. I love to make them; I hate it when I cannot live up to their promise.

In 2019 it is possible that you may not change in any significant way. Are you ok with that? Is it okay to be okay with that way of living? Is this acceptance or nihilism?

According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, nihilism is the rejection of all religious and moral principles, in the belief that life is meaningless.

I am not okay with not changing in 2019. I want to keep growing and I assume that means that change is required.

I am not giving up on the possibility that I can get better with age. Like a fine wine. Or Helen Mirren.

For the next few days or so, I’m going to blog about some of the issues in my own life that have stymied my capacity for growth and as a by-product, change.

I hope that by visiting my past mistakes, I might find a path forward for meaningful change, i.e., transformation. We can fake change or submit to the process of actually doing the work of change. I am too old to fake it. How about you? Are you willing to think about what is holding you back?

Caring for yourself helps your relationships

When it comes to maintaining relationships or ending them, can we all acknowledge that it is very hard and often tricky? May I suggest that we all need to be doing our own work - self-care, accountability for our stuff, finding moments of respite, on and on.

This kind of focus on ourselves is not selfish, it is restorative. It is awfully hard to have healthy relationships with others if we do not have a healthy relationship with ourselves.

How are you doing with your own responsible living? Need to make any adjustments?

Suggestions for rebuilding trust

I’ve learned a few things from watching others rebuild trust, here are a couple of suggestions:

1. If you are the person who threw away trust, then find others (a trust spiritual advisor or a therapist) to talk about your frustrations with the yukky space of broken trust. Don’t complain to the person you broke trust with. Don’t ask them to make YOU feel better.

2. Over accommodate the person whose trust you lost. Ask for feedback as to how to regain trust. FInancial issues? Be so transparent in all your financial dealings that the other person cannot help but notice your change of heart. Cheating? Again. Over-comply with their desires for transparency. Give them the code to your phone. Hide nothing about your daily doings. As long as what they ask of you is not illegal, immoral or fattening, help them learn to trust you.

3. If you are the person who lost trust, be clear and specific about your needs. You deserve to have your wishes granted as trust is re-established.

4. Do NOT rush to say you have forgiven, although of course forgiveness is a thing. Demanding that you be a forgiving person before you have actually forgiving erodes trust in a different way.

5. If you and your partner/friend/business associate, cannot agree as to whether trust has or has not been broken, go to a trusted third party to hash out the details.

6. Finally - small acts of kindness and grace go a long way to rebuild trust on both people’s part. Try not to seek revenge; try not to burn bridges; try to seek compassionate ways to deal with your conflict.

Remember, we all break trust at one point or another. Let’s try to be gentle with one another.

Demanding trustworthiness does not work

I once knew a family that was dealing with infidelity. And the offender eventually grew weary of being the untrustworthy one. She wanted to know why her husband wasn’t being held to his Christian duty of forgiveness. Wasn’t he a Christian after all? Shouldn’t he forgive her like the good Christian man he is?

To which he replied - “I’m wondering the same thing about you. I’m wondering how you, a good Christian woman, cheated on me with my friend.”

Yikes. That’s a good question. Notice how easy it is for us to avoid talking about the issue at hand simply by pointing out each other’s hypocrisy.

This conversation is a trust eroder. Once trust is lost, it is very hard to re-establish.

So here’s a thought - could we work hard to build and maintain trust, rather than demanding others give it back when we throw it away?