choices

Falling Down and Getting Up – Day 456

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Sunset – Photo: L. Weikel

Falling Down and Getting Up

I picked up a book today that’s been half stuffed under my bed for, dare I guess, at least six months or so. My box of tissues had slid off and I could see one of the words of the title: Exquisite. What a delicious word.

The book isThe Exquisite Risk – Daring to Live an Authentic Life*. It’s written by Mark Nepo, an author whose words unfailingly resonate deep within my heart. In fact, I often begin my Listening Retreats with a quote from one of his other books, Seven Thousand Ways to Listen – Staying Close to What Is Sacred*.

Opening the book randomly to a vignette entitled “Falling Down and Getting Up,” I was captivated by the first few sentences:

“When medieval monks were asked how they practiced their faith, they would often reply, ‘By falling down and getting up.’ And there you have the whole muddled mess of being human. Over and over, this very humbling sequence returns us to the earth, to the humus, to the soil. (…)

“How we think about this matters. For falling down is not about failure, but about experiencing as many of life’s positions as possible. It is how we learn. And getting up is not about vanquishing or conquering an opponent or circumstance, but about not getting stuck in one of life’s innumerable valleys.”

Tests and Choices of Friendship – and Life

Sometimes tests come in unexpected and seemingly random moments. Situations arise that ordinarily would appear or sound utterly absurd but, for whatever reason, don the cloak of plausibility for the briefest of moments – and that moment (and our choice) changes everything.

We’re all given options. Choices to tumble into and remain stuck in valleys of ugliness and choices to open our eyes, look up, and wipe the muck from our eyes. Choices to see what is and has been in our hearts, and choices to see, perhaps, what never actually was.

I’m sure it’s been rather obvious that I recently tumbled into a valley of despair and disbelief, discovering betrayal is alive and well in the world (as if we need any reminders). Sadly, betrayal can come in the dual form of both the speaker of lies and those who would listen to those poisonous words and accept them as true without discernment.

Choosing the Mountain

When I discovered this specific passage today, I knew it was confirming what I’d already experienced. I’d just encountered the balm of deep friendship, of knowing my heart was seen – and known – by another. I’d chosen, by simply reaching out, to rise from that valley, regaining my preferred perch with its expansive, honest, and open-hearted view.

It’s amazing what loving kindness can reveal. It’s equally or perhaps even more amazing what lies – and the willingness to believe them – can reveal.

Knowledge is power, though.

Listening to the Voice Inside

Just in flicking randomly through this gift from under my bed, I discovered the following words, which also speak to my recent experiences:

“Whenever you put your ear to the earth or to your own heart, the deeper instruments play, swelling our sense of things. When lost, we simply have to remember to put our ear to the earth, or to our heart, and we will hear a warmth that guides.”

Listening with our whole beings. Listening to our hearts, to the earth, to our own deepest knowing. We all fall, we all make mistakes, we all get lost; none of us is perfect.

Listening, though, helps us make the choice to get back up.

Perspective – Photo: L. Weikel

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(T-655)

39 Years and Counting – Day 229

Posted on by Lisa Weikel 6 Comments
28 June 1980

39 Years and Counting       

I look at that post title and, just like when I had my birthday back in March, I think, “Wow. How did we get here?”

Birthdays and anniversaries. Markers of the passage of time.

Karl and I were married at 10:00 a.m. on June 28, 1980. And lucky for us, at 10:00 a.m. on June 28, 2019, we were sitting together on a rock that juts into the flowing waters of the Tohickon Creek.

Transported from one sacred place to another in, what only in retrospect, feels like the blink of an eye. The living of it sometimes felt like time was moving ever so slowly; so slowly that it felt like yearned-for change would never actually happen. And other times, the living of it felt like the rug, the very fabric of our lives, was being pulled out from under us. Irrevocable, instantaneous, radical change.

At Karl’s Gathering – Photo: Ellen Naughton

Through these past 39 years (and more, actually, since we met three years earlier), the one constant in my life has been Karl. Through education achievements, career changes, sudden death of a parent, depression, births of children, longer, more prolonged sicknesses and deaths of parents, spiritual discoveries, soccer tournaments, track meets, musicals, graduations, disappointments, college admissions, Siberia, initiations, sudden death of a(n adult) child, weddings, joys, walks…

It’s been us.

The loneliest times in my life have been when there’s been discord between us. Those were the times when I most deeply questioned everything.

Gratitude for the Luck – and the Choices We’ve Made

Given the particular professions I engage in, I’m acutely aware of how much work it’s been for us to remain a true, working partnership and best friendship through thick and thin. But I’m even more aware of how lucky we are. So much of what we’ve endured could have easily torn us asunder. But each of us, at critical junctures, chose to stay. We chose to talk. We chose to take a walk instead of storming out and staying away, perhaps pouring our souls out to someone other than each other. We chose to listen.

We chose to forgive. We chose to have compassion.

We also, as one friend reminds us every once in a while because she simply could not believe it when she ran into us laughing and joking in the parking lot of our local grocery store – chose to enjoy crazy things like renting a carpet cleaner to steam clean our rugs together.

“It’s the little things,” we said, laughing at how odd we must’ve seemed.

I do so very much love those little things we share. And the big ones. But most of all, I’m grateful to have Karl sharing them – all – with me.

At Tohickon Creek – 28 June 2019 – Photo: L. Weikel

(T-882)

Circles or Spirals? – Day 201

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Image: thenounproject.com

Circles or Spirals?                          

A lot of people seem to think about life in terms of circles. “What goes around comes around,” for instance, is a fairly common phrase.

Based on my experience, though, and the details of my life I sort of relentlessly try to track, I’m more inclined to think about life in terms of spirals.

For instance, let’s say we experience something uncomfortable, perhaps a form of harassment at our workplace, and we deal with it by feeling ashamed, hiding ourselves away in our cubicle, and trying to make ourselves invisible.

Then, ten years later, you suddenly encounter a situation that’s nearly a carbon copy of that first situation.

Another Pass on the Hamster Wheel?

Some people would perceive this as circular: we believe we’re being subjected to the same situation because we didn’t get it right the first time. Can you hear and feel the judgment and self-criticism in this approach? I hear it; and I’ve felt it, too.

And I’ve learned that I don’t want to look at the situation that way. I prefer to see it as an opportunity to put into action the skills I’ve cultivated and the understandings about myself and life and just people in general that I’ve learned over the past ten years.

So after working at two other companies and seeing, experiencing, and learning about all sorts of other situations, observing how others handled those issues, and recognizing that what you’d experienced ten years earlier was not, in fact your ‘fault’ simply because you are a particular gender, you have a remarkably similar experience to the one ten years ago. And you respond in a completely different manner. In fact, you respond in a way you would never have dreamed you’d respond ten years ago.

Awareness of the Spiral

If I’m able to remain aware enough in my life to recognize a pattern coming back to me on my spiral, I feel challenged and maybe even a little bit eager to see how I’ve hopefully raised my awareness and cultivated my personal power enough to meet the situation from a place of grace or at least compassion and understanding of myself and others.

As I write this, especially when I read that last sentence, above, I realize I may be sounding way more lofty and a lot more pompous than I feel.

Trust me when I say that I aspire to greet certain situations that are ‘returning to me on the spiral’ with more grace, understanding, and compassion – but that doesn’t mean I succeed.

Closed Circuits of Circular Experience

And yet…I am never, ever the same person who experienced a situation one moment and then a remarkably similar one some time later (or had an encounter with the same person pushing our buttons, for instance). We are never the same from one moment to another – so it is almost impossible to be stuck in a closed circuit of circular experience.

Even though it is nearly impossible for us to be stuck in a ‘closed circuit of circular experience,’ we can choose to look at our repeated experiences as bad luck. Or we can develop a belief system that tells us that everybody is out to screw us. In essence, we can choose not to change or learn.

I recently realized that Karl and I are currently dealing with a number of life experiences that have eerily similar hallmarks of many situations we encountered thirty years ago. We’re flirting with feelings, looking at opportunities, and responding to challenges that are astonishingly similar to those we dealt with thirty years ago.

Every Day We Get to Choose

Did we learn anything from how we walked through those experiences three decades ago? Have we shifted, evolved, regressed, closed down, or expanded our awareness since then?

Each day – sometimes from one moment to the next – we get to choose. Are we on a hamster wheel? Or are we ascending a spiral that teaches us new aspects about ourselves and who we are, that gives us an opportunity to transform our lives by responding differently to similar situations or applying concepts we’ve embraced in the interim?

Photo: L. Weikel

(T-910)

Paths and Choices – Day 157

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Paths and Choices – Photo: S. Abbott

Paths and Choices

When we’re in our late teens and early twenties, even into our thirties, it’s easy to imagine that we need only set our sights on our intended destination and zzzzzip – if we’re dedicated and disciplined enough, we will head straight toward that goal.

A lot of us, I’m told, did just that. We ‘knew’ what we wanted and we went after it. Some of us barely stopped to breathe, even if we managed to find a person to love, and then decided to breed.

Breathe. Breed. We do it. We did it.

Some of us didn’t really and truly know what we wanted back then – but we knew we needed to do something.  So we picked a thing and did it. Set our sights ahead, put our heads down, and did the work to reach the goal.

It’s Cliché, Perhaps, But…

More times than we might like to admit, though, when we picked our heads up and saw where we’d actually plowed our way toward, we realized not only that the destination wasn’t anywhere near what the brochure had described but – wow – we’d missed a ton of scenery along the way.

I could get into some long dissertation on the paths we choose and the end of the road. How we feel about the choices we’ve made when we realize there are no longer an infinite number of choices available nor all that many decades left to explore those choices (if we’re lucky). But naaah. I’ll pass.

The Magic of Choice

The photo at the top of this post, from a tulip festival in Seattle earlier today, reflects to me the magic of choice that we’re faced with all the time. We can walk straight ahead, staying on the gravel path that’s been set there deliberately for us to follow, to make it easier, to make our choice abundantly clear – but which leads to what? A ‘concrete’ destination? Or where? A destination so predictable but impersonal that we need an ID card to swipe us through ‘security?’

Portal to the uncharted – Photo: S. Abbott

Or we can meander off, following the curving cobalt path that needs to be trod a bit more carefully (so as not to kill everything we step upon). And just where does the cobalt path lead? It’s a mystery. Perhaps there is no definitive destination, but the path simply intersects, over the horizon, with other colorful paths that lead to forests or mountains or sacred fires burning on lakeshores that connect us to forgotten sisterhoods.

 

Vista from beyond the portal – Photo: S. Abbott

That curvy cobalt path sure does look enticing to me.

(T-954)

Lucky 77 – Day Seventy Seven

Posted on by Lisa Weikel 2 Comments

 

Lucky 77       

I don’t know…this seems like it should be a ‘lucky’ post, don’t you think? The seventy seventh one?

Not only is it a multiple of 11 (let’s hear it for the 1111 Devotion, folks, the reason we’re all here – or at least the reason I am), it’s also the year I graduated from high school. Which kind of jump-starts me to thinking about my birthday that’s coming up in a couple months.

For some weird reason, I’ve been thinking about it lately. I’ve found myself literally reminding myself that this birthday will be different. Not on the outside. Not with respect to anyone or anything outside of my little old self.

But the very fact of it is already different inside myself.

Approaching 60

It’s strange to think that I’ll be turning 60. Of course, everyone surely feels this way when they get here. And when they continue to be lucky enough to reach further societally-acknowledged milestones. I realize I’m not unique. Unless you count those who don’t reach this number. Or won’t. Ever.

It’s weird for me to think that I’ll be turning twice the age Karl was when he died. I’ve had twice the number of years to experience life, although I am quite confident that he encountered many situations and had a myriad of scares, adventures, and opportunities (for good and for ill) that I may never have (or would never seek out). And that’s true in spite of the fact that I’ve had more than the average bear’s chances to do some wild and crazy shit.

In fact, I sometimes wonder if my willingness to recount some of the adventures I had spurred him on to take some of the chances he did. Probably.

Was My Approach to Life a ‘Contributing Factor?’

And there have been moments, usually when writing in my journal and perhaps reflecting on how I see or perceive other people and how they react and respond to their kids, that I’ve asked myself if my parenting should or could have been a substantial contributing factor to his early death. (Not that I’m saying it was ‘my’ parenting. To be clear, it was (is?) mine and  Karl’s – one thing we strive to always be unified on is our approach to raising our sons.)

What I mean by that ‘contributing factor’ musing is that in listening to others and how they respond to their kids’ dreams and ideas, I’m often genuinely surprised by how outlandish my instinctive responses seem to be in comparison.

I’m all about gathering experiences.

Which is probably why I am so attracted to living a shamanic approach to life – the essence of which is based in one’s own unique experiences.

There were at least a couple of moments in the eleven months that I was in Europe when I was 17-18 years old that I could easily have died. In a few, I could have been killed accidentally. In a couple of others, I was simply lucky that the glint in a few people’s eyes didn’t turn into something deadly. I even knew it in the moment of each occurrence.

Learning Through Experiencing

Knowing I’d been lucky in those times that I surely was, though, didn’t make me swear off adventure or unique opportunities. But I know that that knowing  served to hone my instincts. I distinctly remember realizing that the little niggling edge to the wildness I’d seen in someone’s eyes might next time be a ticket to horror.

A couple of times I knew on some level I’d been given a lucky break. You can’t count on them happening every time. You can’t even count on them happening twice. But you can learn from them. You can reflect on what that situation taught you to avoid next time.

I honestly don’t know where my philosophy of life came from. But I’ve always known I wanted our sons to never say no to an experience simply out of fear. Out of intuitive caution? Yes. An assessment of risk that said in their head and heart, “That’d be dumb?” or “That’s a risk not worth taking?” Yes. But due to generalized fear as a result of other people thinking it was a crazy idea or it was something they wouldn’t do? No way.

I know Karl pushed his edge. I know he did things that pushed the edge of his fear, sometimes going too far and paying the consequences (or getting lucky) and other times because he had thought it through and considered the experience worth the risks. And I know he had stories he wanted to tell me – but was waiting until the ‘right time’ to tell. I regret I’ll never hear them; and I regret he never wrote them down the way I asked him, repeatedly, to do.

Regrets?

There’s the chance, I suppose, that Karl (husband) and I could have tempered Karl (son’s) ambition for adventure. No. That’s incorrect. We could have, possibly, attempted  to temper his ambition for adventure. But I truly believe that if we’d spent our time trying to talk him out of things (or more likely, threatening, cajoling, or forbidding), we would have ended up either repulsing him right out the door without encouraging him to be smart when choosing risks, to use his brains and his instincts and his intuition, or we would have broken his spirit and condemned him to a life of mind-numbing (and illusory) safety.

So no, I guess I don’t regret the way we’ve encouraged our sons to approach and live their lives. And if the way we raised them resulted in Karl living the life he did in his 30 years and dying the way he did? I have to rest in my core belief that a life lived full on, as they say, is a life worth living.

Wow. How did I get to this by beginning with a comment about the number 77?

(T-1034)