Author: Bev

 

There is so much movement in our culture and in this time.  I’m afraid we often just don’t sit down until we’re sat down.

There’s so much to do, so little time.  Everybody is busy.

I first thought of titling this missive “movement.”  Then on second thought, it occurred to me that movement felt tied to bowel movement and that’s just not a writerly phrase that I wish to be associated with.

However, movement is just what kinesiology is the study of.  And this, I’m quite happy to be known for discussing.

There are moments when I’m out speed walking or walk-jogging and I consciously think, “my body feels so good, moving.”  It’s a visceral feel-good reaction to movement.

Dancing is another movement that my body, mind, and spirit rejoice in.  I admit I don’t dance often, but there are moments when I do and my mind and spirit both soar when I give in to the inclination.

Watching my grand-baby dance brings back memories of my daughter doing the same at that fresh age.  I think dancing and movement in general frees oneself to express joy, sadness, longing, excitement, fun, if not something deeper within that requires movement.

It occurs to me that the rhythm of life is ramped up these days.  I am growing older, and it also biases me toward mentally wanting things to slow down.

This past year has peaked my awareness that my body naturally moves slower.  I don’t like it.  It’s an adjustment.

I changed my pattern from sitting to standing and standing to walking.  Those bodily transitions have slowed and it’s a more deliberate move than it ever was.  I literally think about standing and notice for a few seconds that I’m about to commence walking.

This is crazy weird for me.  I’ve been active my whole life.  I rarely slow down and couch-potato, I am not.

Are you slower as you grow older?  Was it a sudden change?  Was it hard to accept?

Society is rushing along as fast as it can, it seems.  I don’t think I’m afraid it will pass me by.

I don’t want to forget people, in the rush to keep up.  I love my family, both nuclear and extended.  But we rarely see one another these days.

These loved ones are static in my heart.  They are no less important kept in my heart than they are in my living room.  That’s one of the zillion cool things about love.

I like that my friends, neighbors, acquaintances, and others who pass through our lives don’t need constant tending.  We can run into one another and pick up right where we left off the last time we intersected.

This is the reality of the twenty-first century.  There’s no recrimination for being off the grid momentarily.  We can jump right back on the bandwagon when we’re ready.

Missing in action isn’t as scary as it once was.  Today, though missing for a time, most folks come back, perhaps changed but retaining their essence.

Just because someone isn’t in the thick of things doesn’t mean they’re out of sight, out of mind.  Quite the opposite really.

The whole definition of faith is believing that the unseen is just as valid as the visible.  So, when people need space for whatever reason, we should expect to see them whenever they’re ready to reappear.

Of course I need people.  I love people.  However, I’m also quite content alone, for a time.

Back in the day we used to visit extended family every Sunday.  And it was expected that you visited the elderly in your family.  I went along.

I don’t expect the same as I daily grow closer to that dastardly pseudonym, the elderly.  My child and her family are not expected to come and visit me and my hubby.  They come when they can and that’s enough.

I watch cop/detective shows on television.  One annoying plot that frequently shows up is the unhappy spouse of the exceptionally busy cop who is out there solving murders and the like.  Can’t you just leave them to it, be supportive, and do your own thing?

Honestly, I want to slap that spouse and tell them to get a life.  “You knew what you were getting into marrying a detective,” find something to do.

It’s that constant tending that I as a very independent person find aggravating.  I love you but I don’t need you to entertain me, no matter how old I get.

So, keep doing your thing, moving at your own pace.  I’ll keep doing my thing and moving at my own gait. And I really hope we intersect and lift one another up as we pass in this busy space we share.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“It Ain’t Necessarily So,”* that the beholder of a smile is happy.  Nor is happiness always reflected in a smile.  *(from the opera Porgy and Bess 1935, George and Ira Gershwin)

What is happiness anyway, contentment, joy, giddiness, bliss?  At any rate, happiness and smiles are probably correlated, or related, but one does not really cause the other.

However, I do think it’s proven scientifically that if you force a smile, certain happy hormones, or endorphins kick in as if you meant it.  It apparently doesn’t matter if you’re faking a smile or if you’re genuinely pleased about something, thus cracking a smile; fluffy chemicals supercharge your being.

The thinking is that when your facial muscles form a smile, neurotransmitters such as dopamine, serotonin and endorphins, associated with positive emotion, are released.  This is called a facial feedback hypothesis, and over time, this feedback trend can lead to genuine feelings.

“When you’re smiling, the whole world smiles with you” (1928).  I think smiles are truly contagious.  I’m sure it has been proven in various experiments over time.  It’s hard to be a sourpuss when someone smiles at you.  But then there are always exceptions.

Have you ever wondered why people didn’t smile for photographs in the 19^th and twentieth centuries?  The usual answer is that with long exposure times unlike today’s instant photography, people just couldn’t hold a smile for a whole minute.  Try it.

I know, while we’re waiting for the whole family to pose, my smile grows more and more fake the longer I hold it.  So, people didn’t smile for those photos.  It all began with painted portraits for which people sat for hours, posing.

However, cultural history also tells us that perceptions of smiling have changed over time.  Smiling for photographs was considered poor etiquette and undignified by the upper classes.  Only the poor, drunk, lewd and folks of the low class smiled in photographs.

This was until the 1920s when actors in motion pictures expressed a whole range of emotions.  After this time, photographers and painters alike began to expect at least a little bit of a smile from their subjects.  “Say cheese.”

The yellow smiley face symbol, created by graphic designer Harvey Ball in 1963 has become a universal symbol for happiness.  I guess the smiley face was the parent of today’s plethora of emoji’s including the smiley face, which demonstrate how we’re feeling.

For most of us, our faces are the blank slates upon which we display what we’re feeling on the inside.  I saw the perfect saying on social media recently, “I don’t need a Mood Ring, I have a Face!”

When we grow up, we learn how to behave and how to think, including how to show our emotions.  People read emotions differently to some degree, depending on how, when, or where we were brought up.

However, the ability to read emotions from faces is pretty much a universal skill.  Even people from different cultural backgrounds interpret facial expressions about the same.

There can be a dozen things going wrong with you and when someone asks, “how are you,” you usually smile and at least say, “okay.”  I saw this on social media recently and it pretty much explains this phenomenon, “I smile and act like nothing is wrong.  It’s called dealing with life and staying strong.”

In today’s world, you can hit delete quickly if you’re not happy with your smile.  That makes me a tad happy.

I’ve been sorting thousands of family pictures of old and oh dear, some of them really should not have been kept for posterity, really.  Some amateur photographers, usually “mom,” took pictures without considering that their subject wasn’t framed in their best self.

Thus, the selfie was born.  I personally think this was because of all those horrid pictures mom took and kept in an album or twenty.  The selfie is redemptive.

A crooked smile, delete.  A triple chin angle, delete.  I now hate that shirt, delete.  Finally, my best smile, best angle, good hair day, tummy is tucked as much as it can be.  It’s a selfie at its best and I’m posting it on social media.

You’ve got something to smile about, I know it.  Just ponder a moment, and I’ll bet you’ll smile just in time for Thanksgiving.

 

 

The history of passwords is really kind of fascinating.  Essentially, one has always needed a password or two to enter a secret, private, or mysterious place.  At least, since the early 1700s.

Apparently, many people want to get into the same place that you want to get into.  So, for your own protection, you must create a password to enter that place safely.  The only way to be granted entry by the guardians of privacy, to your own personal information is to correctly pass the memory test of the password.

Passwords supposedly distinguish friends from foes.  If you know the password, you’re determined to be friendly, and you may enter.  But today, we may have been hacked and therefore enemies may enter the camp at any time, and we really don’t know who our friends are.

Pass codes have for hundreds of years been written down on cards or wooden tablets and circulated among friendly forces.  I’ll bet you have a “secret” place where your passwords are kept.  I have bunches of them.  Some of them are unique and impossible to remember if not recorded somewhere for reference.

The password police don’t want us to write down our passwords.  We’re supposed to just remember them.

At least, however, I don’t use 1234…., like half the universe who just want to access the places they frequent without a big silly rigamarole.  Speaking of being hacked.

The word hacked has come to mean “gaining unauthorized access to data in a computer system.”  It used to mean cutting something up roughly and with heavy blows.  For example, “grandma hacked the neck off of a chicken and brought it into the kitchen to finish it off for this evening’s supper!”

Only the correct information gets you into these places where you want to go.  And by golly you just aren’t getting in if you’ve forgotten the all-important password.  In fact, you might just get locked out, maybe for thirty days or longer.  You might even be denied access forever, unless you change your password.

And to change your password, it must not resemble the original password which you have forgotten, remember?

This is tricky business.  And don’t shoot yourself in the foot by making your password too long, involved or elaborate.  This is because you may be forced to type that thing using a TV remote control device which is a difficult device to master.

Have you taken a memory test, otherwise known as a cognitive test, lately?  I have.  It’s a cinch compared to trying to get into your Fort-Knox protected cable TV account.  “All I wanted to do was pay my bill,” she exclaimed.

You also should not make your password too easy, simple, or hackable for your average second-grader.  For example, the 1234… stuff mentioned above.  Oh, and don’t use the password which you have used for any other entrance test.

They try to tell you that all these hoops we must jump through to get anything done these days is for our protection.  Let me be clear, they are not protecting my mental health.  There is no protection from the password police, for my potentially exploding brain.  I’m at serious risk, here.

Today, there is such a thing as “identity credentials.”  You simply are not who you are without proving it to some yahoo.  In the Bible, the word shibboleth was used as a password to establish your identity.  That word literally means “ear of corn,” or “flood.”

Do you know that the rainbow was once considered a promise from God that He would never again, as in Noah’s flood, destroy the earth.  I wonder if there’s a way that God would kindly just give each of us just one shibboleth to last a lifetime, you know, kind of like a social security number, unique to each identity.

And keep the hackers at bay, minding just their own business.  There is this cartoon reel rolling around in my head, where a crazed lunatic type character is hacking the heck out of a row of block letters, sort of like passwords.  In fact, this creature is happily hacking all the puzzles resembling passwords, to unlock my accounts – you know the ones where you must match all the pictures with bikes in them, or match the parts of a bridge, or crosswalks, or traffic lights.

This is not fun, people.  Seriously.  If I want to play a matching game, I’ll find some internet mahjong or something.

I like good jigsaw puzzles.  I’m not bad at matching patterns, color, and shapes.  It’s an easy challenge, if there is such a thing.  There is a sense of accomplishment when you finish a puzzle; like when you manage to enter a website or convince a customer service representative that you are who you are and that you belong there.

But by then, you probably forgot why you wanted to be there in the first place.  Oh well, you finally remembered your password.  However, your sense of accomplish vanishes because you changed that bloody shibboleth the last time you tried to prove who you are.   And the pattern continues.

I think we all have words we don’t like.  Many people don’t like swear words or crass words.  It’s understandable that people don’t like these messy words.

But other words bug us for specific reasons.  My friend and I were impressionable teenagers working in the big city.  Our bosses were older, more sophisticated and worldly and they taught us stuff.

My friend’s boss didn’t like the word, hot.  He said to never use the word, instead say something like, “it’s exceptionally warm today.”  I still avoid the word hot to describe very warm weather.

My father-in-law didn’t like the word, nice.  “What’s nice?” he used to say.

A friend used to hate the word crap; she thought it was ugly.  Some people don’t like the general use of the word hate, thinking it’s too harsh a word to be bantered about so freely.

The children’s book, “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day,” written in 1972 by Judith Viorst must have affected my husband.  He doesn’t love the words terrible, horrible and awful, thinking they’re exaggerations of a milder reality.  This is a man always willing to offer the benefit of the doubt, even to the context of a day.

By now, you’re probably rattling around in your head, the word(s) that you don’t like.  You’re welcome.

Okay, I’m sure you’re hankering to hear the word I don’t like, right?  Well, that word is deserve.  Honestly, I’m not alone.

According to the United States Declaration of Independence, every human being has a right to, or deserves “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  That’s it, nothing more detailed or nuanced than that.

I’m not sure that one can deserve any of the specifics as to how those rights are achieved: especially over and above anybody else in line.  We all deserve the same access to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It’s no mistake that the Declaration of Independence is an historical document from a democracy – not really, more so a republic, and a capitalist society, probably more specifically a meritocracy.  It’s all about the pursuit.

To deserve is to claim reward, punishment, recompense because of one’s actions, situation, qualities.  It’s a determination of worth.

I wonder if I’m embarking upon a slippery slope from capitalism and democracy toward socialism with the concept of human worth, value, and recognition.  Can we all have the same worth in a meritocracy?

Is the Declaration of Independence a pipe dream?  Is it possible in a democracy to all have the same access to the pursuit of happiness, if that pursuit is based on attainment of wealth and recognition.  What’s fair about equality?

Deserved, today seems to be more random entitlement based on qualities given to you such as race and gender.  In the old days you deserved what you got through mainly hard work, achievement, studied accomplishment, diligence and persistence and a lot of waiting,

Surely, I’m worth more because I work harder.  I deserve more money, stuff, recognition because of my value to society.  I deserve to be seen, heard, known because I’ve earned it.

We don’t deserve everything we get, good or bad.  Not everything is cause and effect or even correlated/related.

Some stuff just happens randomly, and people clamor to find a cause, a reason or explanation for it.  Stop.  It didn’t happen for a reason, it just happened.  There is no because, about it.  It is what it is.  Full stop.

How does one deserve?  If it’s an exclusive right, only I deserve, only I’m worthy, then it isn’t what those rights from the Declaration of Independence speak to.

Am I owed something over and above another – why me and not them?  Deserve implies worth and value.

For me, worth and worthy are just as repugnant as equal versus equitable.  You just can’t put a price on a human life – as in “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  Trying to bring likeness to difference is an exercise in futility.

“I deserve to be rewarded for…”  Why?  “I deserve to get…”  What for?  “They deserve everything they got…”  Because?  “If anybody deserves it, they do…”

Does the janitor or housekeeper in the stadium deserve a million-dollar salary and the ball player or entertainer deserve minimum wage?  It seems an oxymoron that worth can’t be monetized.

A sports figure, actor or musician works no harder for their millions than a highway engineer or cafeteria cook, making an average wage.  You just can’t establish an equality of worth.  Nor is it equitable to try to bring equality to these vast disparities of financial or social value given to human beings.

Did you know that the Latin roots of the word deserve are to devote oneself to the service of, to serve.  The President of the United States is elected to serve the people of this country.  Their salary is well below even the annual bonus of most CEOs of major corporations.  Why?  Because they are servants.

On our ballots, we should ask ourselves, does this person deserve to be President of the United States?  Does he or she have the spirit and qualification to serve?  It’s a most subjective decision based upon a most subjective word, deserve.

Media influence in twenty-first century America is ubiquitous.  Everywhere you turn somebody’s opinion is blaring in your face.

People’s opinions are expressed through music and books, art and movies.  Opinions are certainly expressed in an internet news feed or any form of “talk” show on television, radio, print, or even from a lowly columnist.

Most of us don’t dig deeper than the sound bite that we’re spoon-fed.  We see a headline and run with it.  We form our opinions from someone else’s great sounding opinion.

The Apostle Paul said to his protégé, Timothy, “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine.  Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what they’re itching ears want to hear.”  Oh wowzah, has that time come?

Mark Twain said, “it’s easier to fool people than it is to convince them that they have been fooled.”  It seems that we should be careful believing what “they” say.  Because “they” can be wrong, lied to, misled, misinformed, manipulated, or all manner of cajoled, and pass that junk along to anyone who will listen.

I’ve been reading a book about extremism in religion and politics.  It’s sort of an exercise in torture for this political and social moderate.  When I grew up, there were about four topics which we were counseled never to bring up in polite conversation: religion, politics, money, and sex.

Why were  these topics taboo?  Because they’re divisive.  People tend to take up extreme views on these topics and attitudes become heightened.  Middle ground disappears into the abyss and people dig in their heels.

Our culture is effectively evenly divided in our social, religious, political, sexual, and fiscal opinions.  And the two groups who are so evenly divided, are influenced by a few, loud for their numbers, extremists on their side of the table.

It’s quite possible, I think, that many people rely on leaders and influencers to do the heavy lifting of discernment on their behalf.  The Word of God is said to “discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).

I don’t know if there has ever been a time when we’ve needed wisdom and discernment, more than now.  Personal “Enlightenment” is needed, please.  But how do you cultivate, or develop, or otherwise get discernment?

Discernment is the skill to make clear distinctions between such fine lines as truth, knowledge, understanding, facts, and similar information.  To sense what lies behind someone’s words and actions, as well as to see beyond the obvious, is a big part of the ability to discern.

There is truth and error; right and wrong, but discernment helps one to sift out all the stuff in between those polarities.  For example, many people lie from time to time, some people more often than others.  But a person of discernment, tries to discover where the lies are coming from; what’s hidden in the depths?

Like trying to acquire something valuable, it takes time and patience to cultivate discernment.  It’s no quick fix.

However, in a culture where immediacy is normative, waiting for a virtue to develop is anathema to the acquisition of it.  I’m reminded of a scene in a movie where a sassy female character is elicited to say “please” like you do with a young child in training, as in “what do you say,” but she didn’t say “please,” she said “now.”

You can’t get discernment without waiting for it.  Discernment is like stew; to get it right, you can’t hurry it.  It has to simmer.

Discernment comes, maybe not so much with age, but experience.  You have to go through some stuff to gain experience.

Discernment might be a gift, as it is mentioned in Scripture, but it doesn’t seem to be given without some prerequisites.  And the prerequisites aren’t fluff.  We’re talking Introduction to Aeronautical Engineering, versus The Relevance of John Wayne Movies.

Can one even learn to discern?  I don’t know, but I think it’s quite possible that discernment is a gift, much like a singing voice, a sports talent, or cooking gene.  These talents and gifts can be cultivated, but I just don’t know if they can be learned, from scratch, so to speak.

If these hunches are remotely true, we should all be praying for people with the gift of discernment, the gift of wisdom and impeccable judgment, to rise up into positions of leadership in America.  We need unity to complement our diversity.  We need intellectually sober, reason-based thinking instead of “follow-the-leader” banality.

We need peace instead of the incitement of civil war.  Saint Paul said to the Romans, “if it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.”  As far as it depends on you reminds me of “I am only one, but I am one.  I cannot do everything but I can do something,” spoken wisely by Edward Hale.

We may not all have the gift of discernment or wisdom.  However, especially in these tumultuous times, who of us cannot pray?

I saw a poignant saying recently on social media, which sparked a memory.  It was, “You’re going to need oil in your lamp.  It’s getting dark out there.”

Instantly I remembered a really singable song from my youth church days.  Either it was from church camp or it was from one of those spiritually invigorating evening services intended to awaken a sleepy church.

The chorus I recall went like this, “Give me oil in my lamp, keep me burning; give me oil in my lamp, I pray.  Give me oil in my lamp keep me burning, keep me burning ‘til the break of day.”  The song was really catchy, as I guess it was supposed to be (E. Sevison, Lyricist).

About oil, there are all kinds of it.  Oil can be used to grease up a gear or other mechanism that has become stuck in its working.  Oil rejuvenates our joints or anything else in or on our bodies that has lost or worn out its flexibility or natural pliability.

Oil is a vital source of fuel, which powers our bodies and our human-made society.  Fossil fuel, can you say dinosaurs, plant fuel, from corn, other grains, vegetables, flowers and what have you, come from the earth around us.  We need to just tend it, and harvest it.

It’s harvest time, people.  I know in rural America; we celebrate the seasons.  Often those celebrations highlight plants or fruits as symbols of the season.  In the autumn we see a proliferation around the countryside of rich and earthy-colored pumpkins and other gourds, corn stalks, bales of hay, apples, and deep and darkly saturated colors in chrysanthemums.

It’s getting darker by the minute, it seems, as the days of autumn progress.  Daylight is dwindling and our moods grow slightly more somber to match the darker days.

We wear more black, brown, and earth colors, in the fall.  Gone, is the rule to stop wearing white after Labor Day, but aside from a bit of “winter white,” white or other light and pastel colors just don’t speak for our frame of mind this time of year.

We definitely need oil in our lamps to keep us going until the break of day, or spring daybreak as it seems.  So not only literal darkness is coming in increments of a minute or more a day, so is cultural darkness.

Speaking of cultural darkness, I don’t understand quite why we must maintain the cultural construct of Daylight Savings Time.  You know, the “fall-back, spring-forward” clock changing ritual that we follow in most of the United States.

I honestly don’t get it, as an east coast person, why when it gets dark at six o’clock in the evening the way our clocks are set now, we have to set them artificially back an hour making it dark at five o’clock!  Do you know what that means to older people?

We have to fight to stay awake until eight o’clock in the evening, eight o’clock!  I was used to setting out for a walk at seven in the evening, but very soon, my slippers and robe will be beckoning me at seven-thirty.

Humans created Daylight Savings Time.  Why do we have such a hard time changing it back?  It’s just too sensible, I guess.  A few years ago, someone in Congress offered a bill to do just that.  It was tabled by someone out west, I think.  Oh, my heavens, we can’t even agree on what time it is.

Why such darkening?  Some say it’s a spiritual thing.  Others claim it’s totally a human construct, quite by accident or inattention.  Yet others believe it’s a conscious effect of intention, for whatever reason.

At any rate, we need oil in our lamps folks.  We need light for the path ahead.  We need fuel to power the way forward.  How we obtain this oil is a matter of contention, and by nature, refining it is not a pretty process.

We don’t all agree about how to proceed in the darkness.  We agree that it’s getting darker and we need light, but now what?

It’s of little point to fuss over how we got here or why it’s dark.  The fuss begins, however, with specifically what to do now.

We’ve used up our oil.  Forgive us for spilling the oil given to us.  Show us how to refuel without retribution, remorse or regret.

None of us is wise enough to know how to refuel a nation stuck in division.  But I am wise enough to know the only way to unstick the mechanism that is America, is some pretty fragrant and potent oil.

All I can plead is, “Give me oil in my lamp, keep me burning…. keep me burning ’til the break of day.”  Sooner, rather than later, please.

 

The song lyric, “ground control to major Tom,” comes readily to mind when I think of control.   So does the hymn lyric, “I surrender all.”  As does the Serenity Prayer.  I’m guessing even though all these reminders should help us to stop trying to control every little thing in our lives, we stubbornly persist in the habit of it.

In 1969, David Bowie wrote “Space Oddity,” which is maybe about surrendering control by cutting off communication with ground control.  A constant barrage of suggestions, information, this opinion and that one, orders from the boss, pretty pictures of pretty people and pretty things, tempt most of us to unplug the communications.

“Space Oddity” starts out with the quote from above and further on it says “this is Major Tom to ground control….  For here am I sittin’ in my tin can far above the world, planet earth is blue, and there’s nothing I can do.”  It might feel okay to unplug and let go.

There are all kinds of control but the prominent kind in my mind, is basic restraint.  Either we’re being restrained beyond our will (controlled), being restrained for our safety (under control), or exercising self-restraint for the purpose of discipline and the building of character.  One of the biblical fruits of the Spirit, is the virtue of (self-control).

Recently I had an opportunity to spend some time at “the beach.”  Watching the ebb and flow of the waves, tides, and water, was educational for this observer.  It was easy to accept that I had zero control over the powerful process of the ocean’s movements.

On social media I shared a short video of what seemed like layer upon layer of gray and white and tan from the sky to the ocean, its waves, and sand.  The robust waves tumbled one after the other toward the beach in one of the most controlled examples of power, imaginable.

The sound of water is soothing, when it’s controlled.  Two of the basic elements of life, air and water, under control, dominate white noise machines and can soothe our busy minds and help us to relax or fall asleep with greater ease.

When the noise of life with its constant barrage of communication, in whatever form, gets to be too much, I think we need something larger than life to settle us down.  Few humans, like “Major Tom,” get to go to space to get some space from the noise of life.  We need to listen to an ocean, a river, a stream or fountain.  Or go to a quiet aquarium, if you must.

We may need to putter in, walk through, and look at a garden, a forest, an arboretum.  We should probably smell some flowers, observe the grandeur of trees that tower above us, look at clouds and the entire expanse of the sky.

People need people but we need more than people, society, politics, problems, business, commerce.  I think we need to get off the highway from time to time, and walk the path, for respite and perspective.

It’s so easy to get bogged down in controlling one snippet after another snippet of procuring the food and finances of our daily lives.  I wonder if once in a while we need to glimpse an ocean or vast canyon or giant forest – stuff that is obviously beyond our control, to bring us back to peace.

The Serenity Prayer is essentially about humans accepting limits to our capacity to control what happens.  We can do something about some things.  We need wisdom, however, to know when and under what circumstances, to accept the things we cannot control; when to let go.

It should be a universal goal for us to learn to discern between what is an ocean and what is a pool, among the circumstances we face in life.  One is there to teach us to calm down, stop trying so hard against the tide, and dwell in peace at the vastness of it.  The other is to show us that we’re capable of navigating it even if it’s dicey, sketchy, deep, or muddy.

Some of us, maybe more than others, have trouble regulating our internal control mechanism in response to the external stimuli of life.  We do better with some sort of outside controls in place to even out the ups and downs and prevent the spread of an undesirable outcome.  Parents, friends, spouses, or employers can fill this role.

When personal control exceeds its boundaries, it’s a problem.  For example, when you’ve controlled your own environment and then succumb to the temptation to control the environment of others, you need to let go.  If you’re judging what is best, good, or right about somebody else’s behavior or lifestyle, you’d better step back and stick to your own corner of the universe.

Jennifer DeWeil said, “Control is the enemy of rest…. When things feel out of control, our tendency is to hold tighter, grip harder, or work more.”  I say, stop trying.  It’s exhausting. 

I once had a relative at risk for dehydration and all manner of unseemly repercussions from such dehydration.  She didn’t drink enough water.  We practically begged her to drink more water.  We’d place a glass of water in front of her and ask her respectfully to drink it.  She often said, “I’m trying.”  To us, it seemed simple, “don’t try to drink it.  Just drink it.”

Let the power and peace of the ocean have its way with you.  We can’t restrain it anyway, so we might as well let it go.