Transformation

I am a doormat
Not especially decorative
Built to be functional
Pretty unremarkable
No one appreciates me
No one ever thanks me
No one wants to do my job
No one wants to feel so dirty
With mud and muck all over them
But everyone wants me to be here
Doing my job
Everyone wants to wipe their filth off
All over me
So they can walk on
Feeling clean and unencumbered
Though they don't appreciate me
Though they don't thank me
I am here
An unremarkable doormat

But I am tough enough
To scrape off all that muck
Yet soft enough
To give a bit and thus
Reach into the crevices
I'm sturdy enough to lie here
Year after year
Working away without falling apart
And integrous enough
To give a welcome to all who pass
I'm not too pretty
But I get the job done
Which is pretty remarkable, after all

I am a doormat!

I'm Still Here

You tried to take me down
To make me feel like nothing
It made you feel
Like a real big man

And when I cried
You didn't care
You were feeling the power
And it enlarged your tiny sense
Of your own worth
Until you felt like somebody

And when I shrank
You just felt bigger still

You tried to do me in
As if you could feed off my fading energy
Gorging your weakened self esteem
On my pain and shame

But here we are
And I'm not dead - I'm still here
I'm growing stronger yet
Feeding on the power of the One
Who loves us all
Even scared, humiliated me
Even selfish, crazy you

You did not destroy me
Despite all your efforts
No, I'm still here
And you, where are you?

Newton's 3rd Law

Hard-hearted, you call me.

That's what happens when

The volcano of self-protecting anger

Ignites and overflows,

Gushing down and- finding no outlet-

Fills the rib cage,

Superheating that small organ.

When the danger passes

The heart cools down

But it has been tempered by

The need to act and

The impossibility of action.

Hard-hearted, you say?

I am basalt.

Hmmm...

Feelings are not facts!
...yet sometimes they do present
a convincing case.

All You Need

My heart cracked open
and oh! what was there inside:
love, bright, shining love

You... yeah, you

    Wouldn't it be wonderful if every person on this earth knew, just knew, that they have worth? All the energy that goes, every day, into trying to prove that we belong, that we have a right to be here pursuing our dreams, could be freed up for more important uses.
    It starts with sibling rivalry, if you are fortunate enough to have siblings. You want Mommy and Daddy's complete love and attention and here is this other person with their own needs and wants trying to get your parents' complete love and attention for themselves, as if they don't know the world revolves around you! Silly siblings! So you step up your game (and step all over the interloper whenever you get a chance) to do your best to get validation that you are the better, more important, most special child in the family. But sometimes your efforts for attention annoy your parents (they always annoy your siblings but who cares about them?) and instead of getting warm fuzzy feelings from basking in parental love and approval you are scolded for your behavior and are left feeling sad and angry, anxious that maybe your parents don't love you anymore, or won't love you if you don't behave just as they want.
    And it seems to me most people bring this insecurity and rivalry into their relationships with the rest of the world once they grow older and expand the scope of their wants. And thus we have a world full of people trying to impress each other with their own wonderfulness and importance and behaving badly when old fears of inadequacy are triggered. Social media are full of examples of people boasting, gossiping, arguing and tattling, to, about, with and on each other, just as we did on the playgrounds of our youth! And it still happens in the physical world of work and friendships and families every day, as well.
    But what if each and every one of us knew, just knew, that we don't have to waste all that time and energy justifying our existence on the planet, that we are all human beings of equal intrinsic value, worthy of being respected, listened to and loved by others? What if we didn't have the voices in our heads telling us maybe we aren't good enough, the background buzz of anxiety that the love and approval of those around us might disappear at any moment? Think of all the emotional resources freed up for developing talents, pursuing interests, and truly enjoying our interactions with each other! Wouldn't it be loverly?

New Song - How Does It Make You Feel, What Does It Make You Think About?

You come to me;
You want to tell me that you're sorry.
Oh, baby,
Do you think I didn't know
That you're hurting
And your head is full of worries
And you come to me
Though you know that you should stay away?

And I try
To wipe the fear and pain out of your eyes.
I never think about
The pain and fear that you bring into mine.

Love doesn't count the cost,
Doesn't know the battle's lost,
Never sees unfairness in
That weighted die that's being tossed.

And I love you.

So you come to me.
You try to show me that you're sorry.
Oh, baby,
Like I don't already know.
But you're hurting
And you just can't face the worry
So you come to me
And you hope I'll make it go away.

Go away.
Go away...

Affirmation

We are the invisible.
Who will look at us and see?
We are the inaudible.
Will you listen to what we have to say?
We are the untouchable.
Who will hold us in their heart?

I see what's been hidden.
You are not invisible to me.
I hear the things you cannot say.
I will listen.
Your pain is in my heart.
I will hold you there.

An Apparently Unpopular Opinion

   Am I the only one who is having trouble with something that keeps cropping up as I listen to coverage  and discussion of the recent elementary school shootings in Newtown, CT? I hear reference most often to 26 victims that day or that something is being done 26 times, once for each victim of the Newtown shootings, and I always think that surely most people can understand there were at least 27 victims. It's like those making public statements and leading public actions are so afraid of potentially offending others they aren't willing to openly acknowledge the gunman's mother as one of the victims, and I find that sad. No matter how much we love to find someone to blame when things go wrong, and no matter how much we love to blame parents for any inappropriate behavior exhibited by the children they raise, the woman was shot while in bed and had, by all reports, been trying hard in the ways she knew how to help her troubled son, so why are so many unwilling to count her among the victims that day?
   And to completely out myself for the bleeding heart type that I am, I actually count 28 victims killed in Newtown on December 14th. To me, the young man who killed so many before turning the gun on himself was the 28th. Whether you consider that he was a victim of mental illness that took a chance at a normal life away from him, a victim of others' lack of empathy and/or understanding that could have helped him before he got to such a dark and hopeless place inside, or just a victim of the gunshot that took his life away, he was also a victim according to this Merriam-Webster.com definition: a (1) : one that is injured, destroyed, or sacrificed under any of various conditions <a victim of cancer> <a victim of the auto crash> <a murder victim>. 
   Truly, when you consider how a small deviation in our delicate brain chemistry can create such inability to perceive the things around is in a realistic way or to connect with others and even our own emotions, each of us should be able to look at an Adam Lanza and say, "There, but for the grace of God, go I," feeling compassion for the awful pain he most have been in while absolutely deploring the action he chose to take in his attempts to alleviate that pain. If we let ourselves be hardened to our fellow humans' pain of any sort, we are letting the best part of our humanity become another victim of the Sandy Hook shootings.
   

All I Got Is Love

   It will take quite a while for most of us to process yesterday's terrible tragedy, the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. There's a lot of information and misinformation flying around the internet and there will be a lot of discussion as facts surface in the investigation as to what exactly happened and why, and what we can learn from it, and what can we do to prevent such things in the future.
   I'm following the story and taking in the information as it comes out and trying to process it intellectually and emotionally. Frankly, it's really tough. It's an awful thing to read about and think about and feel about. It makes me cry at times and it makes me feel physically ill at times, imagining what happened and how all the innocent victims felt and thought in their last seconds.
   I have no real answers as to what we can do to prevent future tragedies, but I do have a personal philosophy that gets stronger every year as to how we who care can make a difference: all we got is love. In the fight against evil and darkness on the earth, our most powerful weapon is love. If we can feel love for and act in a loving way toward those we encounter in our daily lives; if we can swallow our own self-importance enough to remember we have no idea what the other person is going through or feeling that makes them act the way they do and say the things they say and have compassion for those who are hurting so badly they lash out at others - while maintaining enough love for ourselves we don't remain in a situation that is damaging to us; if we can choose certain loving actions we can make a part of our routine, like volunteer work that helps others less fortunate than ourselves or regularly taking the time to check in with people we know who are on the fringes of society and may not have a good support system in place, then we are doing our part to prevent senseless tragedy. The power of our love can help feed the spark of caring and humanity in others we encounter and the resulting blaze will overcome the power of darkness in the end. And I know it can happen. After all, someone much wiser than me tells us in the Bible at Romans 12:21, "Do not let yourself be conquered by the evil, but keep conquering the evil with the good."

Back Off, People!

    If you knew a person who was in a terrible accident as a child and lost a limb as a result, would you badger them to work hard to attempt to grow that limb back? Even if you believed they're such a nice person they really deserve to have the use of all their appendages? Even if you were convinced there had to be some way if they would just try hard enough? Would you really presume you knew better than they how they should allot their resources and align their priorities in their life? ...I didn't think so.

Reconstruction?

I'm poking around this cavity
In moments of fun, and gravity
Examining all that's not here
Taking readings of the atmosphere
Carefully studying the empty space
Conjecturing what would fill its place
Tracing the shapes made in the air
So, finally, I can see the chair
Trying to define what I've never had

Watching the amputee slipping on scrim
Can you envision the missing limb?
Born deaf and still attempting to sing
Will anyone listen to such a thing?
The sightless artist painting the sky
What strokes does he make? and moreover, why?
Born with the capacity for faith and trust
How to rebuild what's crumbled to dust?
A person I would want to call "Dad"

self sabotage

strange how
a place can be
so familiar
and yet
so hard to recognize
each step of the journey
each time
you return

Overachieving

   An interesting thing happened to me on my way to work this past summer. I was driving on a back road and I could see a couple of people and a dog walking down the road in my direction. The dog wasn't on a leash and it broke away from its people and started jogging toward me. It seemed that the people tried to call the dog back, but it was more interested in my car than whatever they were saying.
   As the dog came closer, I slowed down so as not to run into it if it made an unexpected movement. It stopped right in the middle of the dirt road, so I also stopped, rolled down my window and told it that my car was much bigger than it and it could get hurt if it stayed there. At this point, the people accompanying the dog were probably no more than 30 yards away so I just sat and waited for them to come retrieve it. I wasn't having the greatest morning, was already late to work, and really didn't want to hit a dog, even at a very slow speed, to make my day even more stressful. I was feeling pretty good about how responsible and patient I was being despite their obvious delinquency as dog owners in not keeping their animal out of my path as I waited for the woman to reach her dog.
    Imagine, then, my surprise when the woman (who looked a lot like a shorter version of Katherine Hepburn) approached my rolled down window and kindly but firmly said to me, "You need to learn something." She went on to tell me that when this dog, or any dog, was in the road, I needed to keep on driving. According to her, the dog had been encouraged in this bad habit by people like me who stopped to talk to him or even feed him treats when he was in the way of their cars and that's why he kept getting in the way. I was just reinforcing bad behavior by stopping my car. She seemed set to lecture all day (I found out later she was probably a retired teacher) so I did my best to draw the one-sided conversation to a quick conclusion by acting interested in what she had to say and then taking the first opportunity I got to thank her for the information and wish her a good day.
    As I got to work and set up for the day, my mind kept returning to this incident. I could see the point in what the woman was saying but couldn't help but feel rather annoyed at the way she let her dog do whatever it wanted, then chastised me, a person who didn't know this particular dog and had been inconvenienced on my way to work by its actions, for my 'enabling' behavior! I couldn't quite decide whether to laugh it off or give her a piece of my mind if I ever ran into them again.
    And then I realized what about the experience kept me mulling it over and what my attitude about it would gel into. I thought to myself: is it harder to train unwanted behavior out of one animal that you have contact with every day, feed, groom, take care of it it gets hurt or sick, and, presumably, inspire affection and a desire to please you in, or to undertake to train a wanted behavior into hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of previously unknown drivers you will encounter when you are walking said animal on the back roads of a small community over its lifetime? It absolutely boggled my mind to imagine the amount of determination and confidence that could cause a person to prefer to undertake the latter task! And I decided that that woman is the best definition of an overachiever I've run into in a long time.

Peerless

Billions of people
yet not one your exact match
feeling special now? :)

Yup!

I Don't Know

Catch me when I fall
Answer when I call
Do you hear me? Do you care?
Let me know that I am real
That you know how much I feel
For something that's not even there
Did you think we would always be together?
That your loving could shelter me forever?
There's so much you don't know you don't know

Tell me you're still waiting
Still anticipating
It's not true we both know
Hold me as I cry
Look me in the eye
And say "hello", as you go
Did you think those mixed messages you're sending
Won't tell me we've lost our happy ending?
There's so much that I know you don't know

Now comes the part I feared as I tried to keep you near
We're all scared of what we can't see
I was clinging to that ledge as we teetered on the edge
If  I fell now I might land right smack in me!

Catch me when I fall
Answer when I call
Who will hear me? Who will care?
I think that I'm still real. I know how much I feel
I will find me. I'll be there
Did I think I could hide away forever?
I just can't be that strong - or that clever!
There's so much that I know I don't know
There's so much that I know I don't know

Haiku

thoughts whirl in and out
feelings follow up and down
breathe deep. life will be

Ya Know?

     There are different ways of knowing things. In thinking it over, I've identified three. First is an intellectual knowing of a thing you've read or heard about or observed (like a science experiment). This might be termed "head knowing". Next is a knowing in the gut, an intuition. This occurs when a person decides to change their plans because they just "know" something bad is going to happen. And sure enough, something does happen to their original flight or along their intended route, or what have you. People who believe they fell in love at first sight are also trusting in this "gut knowing". The third type of knowing is what I call "heart knowing". This likely takes some time and experience of a person or situation to develop. An example of this type of knowing is when it looks as if a man has committed a crime, but his wife (or mother...or friend...or child...) knows he's not the sort of person to do such a thing and maintains his innocence even after he is convicted. Then one day it becomes possible to use DNA evidence to prove his innocence and he is released. Sometimes heart knowledge doesn't agree with head knowledge, but that doesn't mean it's wrong. At times it may be in our best interest to believe in something that can't be proven.
     Then I realized that if there are these different ways of knowing, there are different ways of being known, as well. Many grown people are most comfortable with being known primarily on an intellectual level. They like to talk and be listened to, because that gives them more control over what others think of them, or how others "know" them. Gut knowledge no one has much control over, though I suppose a person might do their best to look good, being clean and well-groomed and dressing neatly, in an effort to offset any negative impact we might unwittingly have on others' intuition. If we are very comfortable with the people we are with, we may be able to still our intellect enough to get to know them with our heart, to feel the essence of the person they are and let them see the unedited version of us, the one we're usually trying to put a spin on in our dealings with other people. Young children are still skilled at knowing and being known with the heart, probably because they have little experience with life and so don't feel scared yet to let others be close to them.
     You likely know of other types of knowing I didn't think of, but these are the ones that I know make sense. I know all three of these kinds of knowledge are useful to us. We just need to know how to listen to and for each kind and to know which one is best to trust in in each instance. And that kind of knowledge probably comes from a blend of all three (or more) types of knowing. Do you know what I mean?
   

The Grass Is Always On the Wrong Side of the Fence?

     Some people seem to never be satisfied in life. Whatever they have, they wish they had something newer, bigger, faster, better. Wherever they are, they wish they were somewhere else. Whoever they're with, they wish they were with someone more perfect (like themselves, presumably). I could go on and on.   
     Of course, this attitude is encouraged by the advertising industry. We are inundated with messages (some subtle, some not-so) designed to make us feel like we need the newest, biggest, most complex, etc., of whatever is on the market. No matter how determined I am to enjoy the moment and be satisfied with what I have, it can be hard to resist all the alluring images of tropical vacations and shiny new electronics! And our cultural attitude that we deserve to be blissfully happy at all times makes it very hard to be patient with the flaws, real or perceived, of those around us. Not to mention how the increasing stress of being patient and polite with an ever-increasing circle of persons at work, at school, on the road, in stores, online, brings us home with less and less self-control with which to use those qualities on our nearest and dearest. Rather than realizing that the fault lies in our own thinking and behavior, we can easily begin to believe we would be happier with a different partner, parent, child, sibling, roommate, even pet! The promise of a quick fix for our dissatisfaction by jettisoning the old, with its known flaws, to make way for the intriguing new can be so enticing.
     Unfortunately, once we get to know whatever new person, place or thing we thought would make us ecstatically joyful all the time, we see it also has its own set of imperfections. And we have to decide whether we need to make a switch again or find ways to be content with the circumstances we are in now.
     Now, my philosophy tends to be, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" And I can make a pretty good case for the position that this is morally superior to continually needing/wanting something newer and better. But if I'm honest with myself I have to admit my attitude stems at least partly from a bit of laziness on my part. It takes work to make an informed choice when replacing a new item. It takes work to go looking for a new job. It takes work to move to a new area. And it takes a lot of work to get to know a new person in any sort of close relationship! So why not just stick with what you have and tell yourself it's because you are a "better" person than those who go job hopping around the continent or have to trade in whatever they have for the latest model each time it comes out?
     Sadly (for my desire to remain in my comfort zone), I also am fairly committed to trying to be honest with myself. And sometimes a change is the best thing for ourselves and those around us. Sometimes we or the job have grown and/or changed to the point that we are no longer a good fit. Sometimes a person we meet is so worth our spending time and effort in getting to know them better. Sometimes we need to move out of our parents' basement before we're retired and sitting down there all day long! And sometimes that twenty-year-old car would be better off at the parts yard and we would be better off with a cute little Kia wagon and a small loan, establishing a credit history and spending less time waiting by the side of the road for a tow truck.