Frames That Divide Us

 

"Do not frame the moments  our lives intertwined. There are a billion instances before that have brought us here to now.  We will need a lifetime more to share the whole of the story if you are so brave and inclined." CMH

She is ninety-five years old now, living alone.  Her husband has passed and her truest companion now is a small dog named  Precious.  He waits eagerly this day for his new, young dog walkers to take him for his Tuesday morning walk. The young women enter the house for the first time and take in their surroundings.  There are a few nameless faces framed on the walls throughout the room.  The smiling face of their client and her dog on a family room pillow. It will become a regular thing to enter after each walk when invited to share a moment, a bit of light conversation while each week daring to ask a few more questions to fill in the missing life story that cannot be found in the current frame before them.

This week after accidentally breaking the glass on a framed sea glass picture, I decided I would use the wooden frame to take pictures of various things outside. I did several of my plants in the garden and took one to add to an Instagram story.  I decided against sharing the rest, realizing that the context would be missing or the creative point and the back story would be lost.  The story of how proud I was of the growth of these plants under my care, how some of those we were sure would not make it had developed beautiful foliage and blooms despite the odds.   The framed versions were best as mine to be appreciated.  This reminded me of how much of the story is missing from a single frame which in this story,  becomes my metaphor for the instances  our lives connect with one another. 

Every morning I have gone for a run this summer, I have encountered a squirrel  on  a tree in the same spot. There are several more racing up and down the tree but this particular one is missing its big bushy tail. Assuming it is the same one I see each time, I start to wonder what her story was before this little frame of time we met.  Was life different as a squirrel without a tail and was it born with out one or what  happened to cause the loss? There must be so many adaptations she has come to make as a result and I think of how she manages to stay warm or if it makes protection from the elements or predators more challenging.

Maybe you sometimes wonder about the various frames of other people's lives you witness or interact with and willingly and unwillingly become a part of. We often think we know the whole person before us but we are only being welcomed into this current frame of the now.

One of the same young women in the frame my words created, sitting on the couch, walking the sweet dog, is also the young woman that some may have framed at the local thrift store, struggling with autism overwhelm, and a meltdown. Seeing either of these frames may have defined a very different person without the integration of the whole story beyond the frames. 

If we continue to frame our moments that cross with another, we are only using our judgment to make sense of the story we see, bringing to it our own bias, experience, or lack of.  In this story, we are missing the elements that create understanding which leads to compassion and awareness.  We are forgetting to integrate the whole person before our encounter or the one that we may never meet again. 

However these unpredictable experiences have shaped our reality and family, we all  have similiar experiences and the  opportunity to see beyond the framed picture that others see and our experiences  can nudge us to look for the real stories of others.  As it happened this week, my husband was driving back from outside the city limits and his path crossed with a young woman and two bags filled with all of her belongings on the side of the road. It was 30 degrees celsius and she dropped the bags and herself in a disheveled pile of resignation. He drove past before turning back to ask the woman how she was and she said she was hot, lost, and hungry. As she muttered to herself, he went against his initial feeling about the frame in front of him and asked how he could help. He sought  her story beyond what he saw. She asked if he could drive her to a center in the uptown. A center he knew to be for shelter and treatment.   He agreed and she settled herself in the back of our vehicle, clutching the two bags of all of her belongings.  She did not agree to share her name and they drove in silence.   When the car stopped she was on her way. Frames of lives intertwined with such a small part of the story.   

I assume that one of the many reasons people write is to tell stories beyond the initial frame, to contemplate the bigger picture and the minutiae of details.   Many of us share our lives like picture frames worthy of being showcased on walls and social media posts. We do this so frequently and habitually that we may begin to craft a pseudo-reality of the one we are living.  Those that courageously offer a view outside of the frame, we may believe to be oversharing and we encourage them to discern what stories are meant to be private or sacred . Many indeed  are sacred and I loved  how a favorite podcaster explained this. She said to make sacred is to make holy and her opinion was that maybe we honor our stories when we share them and we are saying they are sacred enough for others to know.  The same may be said for those that are private.  The raw universal moments we all experience don't need to always be kept private. When we share  we are normalizing the experiences  for others and creating an inclusive connection but if we don't offer the stories that are ours to tell, if we are influenced by the should and should nots, we may be left with too many empty frames and feelings of shame, isolation or disconnect.   

As you stand in a group of ten individuals whose paths converge with your own, they may all have us in very different, unique frames. Some because of the timing in our lives and our own growth and circumstance and some because they were comfortable with the image they created while filling in the missing details.  As we wrestle with our stories and wonder if it is too private to share, ask yourself if someone else may benefit from hearing your honesty, realness, and the ways that we are all the same, and then in your own way, with your chosen people, begin to share it one frame at a time. 

Becoming Soft - Lessons from a Standard Poodle

 

"I tell you this to break your heart by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world." Mary Oliver

Can you bring a moment into view, an instance where you physically tightened? Your jaw clenched, your shoulders went up or you held your breath? Maybe you resisted the words spoken by someone close or prepared your defensive response.  In all of these ways, we are hardening into an experience or as a result of  the current circumstance. We may see these cumulative experiences as the right of passage out of our youth toward becoming an adult.  Somehow believing that the softness that came before represents our naivety or lack of experience. Over time we begin to assemble our armor piece by piece after each hardship, heartbreak, regret, or moment of remorse. We connect or join the pieces one by one so we may present the illusion of strength perhaps to ourselves and others. 

There were probably very overt ways the message of building strength and hardening as a survival mechanism was communicated through hardships and imposed realizations brought through difficult times but there were also less obvious ways as well with subtle references from loved ones and strangers where we got the message we needed to present a strong front. The subtle glances of disapproval of tears, displays of affection received with awkwardness or uncomfortable vibes in the rooms where the message of oversharing was received through body language, and the dichotomy of responses to the same inquiries.

Maybe your vivid memories of softening into life are more sparse and significant. Being reminded recently by a dear friend's social media post about the power of softening, my thoughts went to one of these few early memories of softness.  I was instructed to soak in the bath drawn for me by the nurse after giving birth to my first daughter.  The bath was drawn with a dose of Epsom salts with the intent to soak away the physical discomfort.  Instead I lay in the tepid water, gazing down at my soft body that had been stretched to house another human and now the soft folds of skin submerged in the water not yet ready to rejoin my body. This, I had thought was truly what it meant to soften. I would be softening into motherhood over the many years ahead, most of which had nothing to do with my physical body but in this moment it was showing me what it meant to soften, a foreshadowing in a sense. 

Last week, I was reminded again of the challenges of remaining soft and coming back to softening. My companion and man's best friend, Shanti the dog had an unfortunate encounter with two dogs while walking with my youngest daughter, Maya, and my husband.  Shanti remained rooted in his stance as he was pinned down by the large dog. While the small dog found the soft underbelly to attach to. This was a quick, senseless and unfortunate event and I am so grateful to say that he will heal and be better with a bit of time. I do mention this to marvel at how instinctual it was for these animals to look for the softness. I was left wondering why Shanti didn't retaliate, bark, bare his teeth, run away or any other typical dog reaction. It did settle in quickly that Shanti was remaining soft yet strong for Maya who was holding the end of the leash at the time.  He did not move or waiver in his own attempt to protect her from the dogs. Maybe he even realized that her seeing him act savagely would have been even more traumatizing in the moment.  

The days after I grappled with my own instinct to harden here. To get angry about what happened, to tell the story of how hard this was and inconvenient, to ruminate over how life is unfair and non-sensical, and to retreat into my fears around the ways that the world continues to be unsafe.  But I still came back to Shanti and his soft underbelly and the quote we have heard about  the importance of having a strong back and soft front, by Joan Halifax.  So I continued to ask myself to soften through my difficult thoughts and reactions.  Mostly to soften into allowing them to be there and to not retreat into those old narratives and patterns of behavior that may accompany the discomfort of the feelings.

Spending a lot of time in nature as always, I was searching for examples of how to stay soft here even though I was offering myself the grace for not being able to do it right now. What I arrived at was the flowers surrounding me in the yard. I can't think of anything in nature quite so soft. The center of  each bloom remains open with the soft petals forming all around. Their softness is the spectacle of their innate beauty and strength.  As they blossom in their fullness, they become even more heavy in the weight of their softness. All the while being supported by their spine like stems. Reaching and opening towards the light and bowing with grace, as they bend but don't break. 

I wondered too if the flowers bow with the weight so they can remain open, soft , and full of grace, if we too, could learn to emulate this process?

We spend so much of our early life acquiring our armour, our strength and our presumed resilience, only to realize that as our physical beings begin to soften with that our minds will yearn to do the same. We can then spend our time softening as Mary Oliver says, "To let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. 

As I go about my day today and continue to whisper my intention to soften away from or into this experience, I will also curl my soft front into my t-shirt clad, cone wearing , peace dog. Maybe too, I will ask myself what love would do in this moment and let Shanti be my guide.

Consistency or Discipline? - Let's sit

 "Small discipline repeated with consistency every day leads to great achievements gained slowly over time."  John Maxwell 

This morning I planted myself on the cold slate rock in the infancy of my flower garden.  The early morning had drawn me, as it often does, into many unfocused places. Getting past the headspace that is saying this deserves your attention to its big picture or small details, I move with discipline to my consistent practice or I bring consistency to the discipline of honing my attention. As I sat there, I was witness to the sound of the garbage truck braking in front of my house, the waste removal person lifting and dumping garbage, the arrival of the hired mower, driving his ride-on mower off the back of his truck, and on to my neighbor's lawn and the cacophony of sounds and songs of the birds around in my yard.  As I drew my attention closer to the sounds of both familiar and unfamiliar harmonies of each bird,  I could move further away from the other noises around while still bearing witness. Along with my thoughts, feelings, and the physical sensations of sitting on something hard, the breeze touching my skin in one moment and the sun warming my back in the next.  Contemplations for writing, plans for the day, anticipated future disturbances,  past excitement, and anxiety trade places in my heart and mind space like the sands in an hourglass. Becoming also the one watching and witnessing my physical self as I notice all that is around me and in me at this particular moment. Taking a breath creates a little room and when the attention drifts again, as it always does,  I begin to witness the symphony of the bird sounds once again.   This is a typical meditation for me. Witnessing, drifting, bringing attention back, then wanting to check out, to unfeel the feeling, and then observing the thoughts that are leading me away and trying to find the touchstone of the experience to come back to. For today it is the songs.  

Meditation has always been something that is difficult to describe as it takes so many forms for the individual and depends on a person's cultural experience. It is defined as the action or practice of using a technique of focusing the mind on an object, thought, or activity as a way to train attention and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm, stable state.  Others have referred to it as the yoga of the mind.  The consistent discipline of silencing thinking to get to the source of thought.  What resonates with me has always been a mental check-in with myself while witnessing all the places my attention flows and it can allow me to be with the source of myself and the universe.   Now it is also evolving into a written expression of my contemplation or thought process that allows me to remain the witness of the moment. 

 For today, I come back to the birds and then my mind begins to wonder if they too are witnessing me, witnessing them.  They seem unphased but not oblivious to my presence and stay consistent in their song. Is it self-discipline, in the sense that we experience it, that keeps them present to their song and undeterred by my being in their space or the other sounds around that continue to drown them out at times? 

Birds use their songs and sounds for a multitude of reasons, to attract a mate, as indicators of safety, to impress, and defend.   They can often be heard singing in the early morning when there is less observable wind and noise pollution.  Songbirds make up half of the world's ten thousand bird species. No one really knows all of the reasons for the singing and sounds of birds. Maybe it is also their meditation practice to come back to their joyful song, just as singing for us, helps to activate the parasympathetic nervous system which promotes health and emotional release, maybe this is also part of why they continue to sing. Maybe they are singing for the joy in it.  This consistent practice may be how they stand to bear witness to all that is happening in the world around them. Perhaps they too know the importance of continuing to witness as this is where the next right move can come from. This may keep them alert to predators or dangers in their changing environment.  

Meditation is not just for the monk on the mountain, tucked away from both the atrocities and beauties of connecting and witnessing in the physical world,  as one of my beloved mentors was always pointing out.  But it allows us to stay right here, to witness, experience, and act.

It is alright if at this moment, we have no advice, wise words of comfort, or inspirational thoughts to offer. The non-sensical patterns of behavior and circumstance, that seem to be on repeat and draw our attention back and away in a pendulum swing, are not leaving any time soon.  We can be assured that our ability to build the capacity to sit on the hard cold rock, to filter the noise, to hear the song and the messages we find in this place is the consistency of discipline we need when we can see no end in sight.   It is the fuel of this right here that allows us space to discern, to not turn away, or at least not for too long, Like the wisdom of those who plant the tree and know they may never pick its' fruit or sit in its shade, we are also able to understand that our witnessing and space for consistent discipline and action may be what the birds already know. 

We may be here to continue to make our beautiful melody in amongst the distractions, the unknown, the unfamiliar, and the heartbreak. We are here to be a part of the choir for change, to not look away, to witness and allow our voice to be consistent, and disciplined so our joyful singing can be heard amongst the noise. 

Change that Empowers.

"In order to design a future of positive change, we must first become expert at changing our minds" Jacque Fresco

On this day, as was the case for most Saturdays I remember of living at my childhood home, I woke to the sound of whistling and followed the smell of bacon and eggs to the kitchen.  My father was there cooking breakfast with the television on in the family room to keep him company.   It was generally tuned to a nature show on the weekend and helped him shift gears from a long week of travel with his work.   What I remembered most was the show "The Nature of Things with David Suzuki.  There were animals in their natural habitat empowered to do what came innately to them for their survival and the protection of their young and their species. I think my father gravitated towards these shows, beyond the obvious reason of how captivating the natural world is because they offered a comfort that could only be found in the flow of the animal world. They were living an empowered life, making their own choices and decisions, surviving unbelievable circumstances, and always innately following their instinct and intuitive nature provided by the energy of the universe.  Being a sensitive soul, I did not always have an appetite for this complete honesty about predators and prey, the perils involved in survival, and the continuous changing circumstances, elements, and balance of power that they had to navigate every moment of their lives and I was young enough to have not yet made the connection to myself as part of this world order.   My Dad was always reassuring me that indeed, however constant change was in nature, this continuous shift in balance, and power, could and should be trusted as the earth and its living things have been surviving and thriving long before humans' attempts at control or power over.  This may have been a simplistic explanation to soothe his young daughter's concerns at the time but I believe it was that explanation and his faith in nature, that has played an intricate part in empowering how I have evolved, who I have become and how I understand the world around me even when it is making the least sense to me. It has been a compass to come back to and comforting to know that nature allows this flow to occur and as a result, it provides for the need of all of its creatures to be and do what their nature requires and this aids their interconnectedness.  From the matchstick moss and other forms of fungi that support trees' longevity to the black bear's protection of its young, there is an interplay happening that we don't need to interfere with and if we are looking for answers, we don't have to look far to see how nature has and is and always has flowed with grace.

If we have not been hiding under a rock recently, and it is alright if we have as it is necessary sometimes,  we are aware of many man-made changes in our world right now that are disempowering to all people.   When we talk about change, we are usually talking about making someone or something different by altering, modifying, or replacing.  It is the act or instance of making or becoming different.  There are abundant examples of change in nature.  Birds molt winter plumage to gain breeding feathers, deer coats transform from ash gray to rich brown and rabbits have a similar experience.   Rivers, lakes, and oceans continuously change color hues, water levels, waves, ripples, tides, and currents.   You can glance at the lake in the early morning and see a glass-like surface and moments later it has evolved to white caps. These are the kinds of changes that have the element of comfort. We allow nature the power to make those decisions for itself.  What will work best at the moment and we assume that change is moving things, cycling, and improving.  We adapt to the obvious change and tend not to question it.  Patterns, transformations, and cycles are witnessed and allowed in nature.  This exemplifies the element of trust my father had referred to.  I think because of nature's examples, we always believed that humans would also follow this laid-out trajectory and trust.  The result of this would be that we would be continually learning, changing, and growing in our capacity for openness,  humanity and ultimately love.   Somehow knowing there would be slip-ups and setbacks.  Mistakes would be made and things would not always be digestible for the faint of heart but we would extend this trust to each other as we too are part of the natural world and the rhythm it creates.

I have continued to marvel at the work of  David Suzuki over the years.  Recently he shared information about bias in the scientific classification of 450 species of mammals, birds, reptiles, insects, and other animals.  With the ever bias and missing pieces of history of indigenous, black, queer, and disabled populations,  we can't be surprised to learn that bias had found its way into the reporting of facts about numerous species and as a result, we are missing any knowledge of queer ecology.  The scientific research he presented was so interesting and important to our understanding of ourselves and all of nature.  David shared that Giraffes, bottlenose dolphins, and grey whales mate in all-male groups.  Bighorn sheep are homosexual until six or seven years of age.  Female foxes form lesbian communities and over ninety percent don't reproduce. Male foxes are indeed bisexual.   Bonobo Chimpanzees mate with multiple partners regardless of gender.  Clownfish change from male to female depending on the needs of a colony. Male and female spotted hyenas have the same genitalia. Snakes, lizards, frogs, insects and birds all have intersexuality, gender diversity, gender-ambiguous organs, or other gender organs. They also can physically change genders.  Female lions grow manes and exhibit male-like behaviors.  If this was not your area of study or expertise, you may never have learned these facts about other species so similar to us.  The difference being that they have not been disempowered or mistrusted in the ways in which they adapt, live, connect and cycle through life. 

We can trust in the many species who do what is best for their survival, their young, and who molt, adapt, and evolve as necessary to stay in the current of life.   Recently there has been reporting of Orcas who are aborting sixty percent of their pregnancies. It is believed that they are doing so because of the shortage of salmon as a result of humans.  Without the salmon, they won't have food for their young. They are such wise, majestic creatures who have survived and thrived for centuries.    Caribou survive on lichens. This is their primary food source. Because this food source has been threatened, their bodies will naturally reject their fetus. What a wonderful natural phenomenon in nature so they will be able to have young when they can both live a bountiful and full life. There are many other examples in nature where animals will pause a pregnancy. What a gift nature has provided for all species.  We can continue to trust in these natural decisions made.  Otherwise, we would be disempowering these creatures with our resistance to their being able to have agency over themselves. This is disempowering change when we don't believe in the species, or individuals' abilities to do what is best for them and as a result, is best for all of the natural world. 

My father has seen many changes throughout his life. Many of those related to the raising of three daughters.  He came with his own beliefs, biases, prejudices, and ignorance as we all do. But he came with a willingness to learn, a will to do what was best for us. Many times all of these things he came with conflicted but he can be proud of the instances that he chose to do or allow what would give us agency over ourselves and to have the opportunity to have the lives we chose and not those thrust upon us by circumstance or choices of others. My father was able to extend the trust he had in nature to me and my sisters and in trusting us, he helped to bring empowering change into our lives so we could continue to trust nature's wisdom and our true nature as well.