Author: Bev

 

Do you ever feel overwhelmed by a barrage of demands for your time?  I know I have and I often shout to no one in particular, but to the universe, “could you please just give me a break!”

Having just read a scientific article about self-compassion, I learned that giving yourself a break is the least likely act of compassion you will offer to anyone.  So, give yourself a break too.

We’re living in a world that presses hard against us to keep up, to produce perfect products and services, and to look good doing it. I’m thinking we need a break to avoid a breakdown.

I believe it’s workplace law that employees are given a break, maybe two in the course of their work day.  So, if you’re self-employed, break free from the grinding demands of your work, and take a break or two throughout your day.  Retired folks, too, live in a culture that expects everyone to keep busy and work at something, even if it’s not an official job, and need a break every now and then.

School children are given a break during the course of their studies, for play as in recess, or at least for quiet, as in study hall. Everyone needs to be cut a break sometime.

After having a break, we often feel able to go about our tasks with renewed vitality.  Studies have proven that mid-day naps are revitalizing to workers.  They come back to work as if it were a new day.  The same can be said for exercise which is both relaxing and energizing.

Separating yourself, even for a moment, from stressful events, the ongoing pressure of work, relationship-keeping, staying on top of the stuff of life, etc. is a remedy to day-time fatigue.  A walk around the block, a visit to a park, even walking down your driveway can lighten your burden.  It’s called breathing space when you interrupt the building chain of events toward burnout.

So, before you crack up, take a break.  A bit of trivia about “cracking up” – we of a certain generation had heard in some form, “she cracked up and went to the funny farm.”  That was well before making such comments landed you in social prison.  At any rate, we grew up saying that hilarious things “cracked me up.” 

I found some roots for the phrase, “cracked me up.”  Apparently, 17^th century makeup applied to a woman’s face thickly would break or crack when she laughed.  So, laughter became associated with having a breakdown, supposedly a funny one.

And fortunately, we’ve “come a long way baby,” since attributing all breakdowns to hysterical women, labeled such, because untrained male doctors in antiquity thought any anomaly in women was directly attributed to her having a uterus (Greek/hystera).  Thus, all women were considered broken and prone to hysteria, cracking up, and potentially destined for the funny farm.  A sad lesson in history which has been remedied a million times over, thank God.

On the contrary, I’m delighted to know of the Japanese Kintsukuroi tradition which in a sense celebrates brokenness. I was reminded of this tradition when in a dream, I preserved a bowl I had broken, in the freezer.  You may have seen Kintsukuroi bowls in works of art.  They repair broken bowls by filling in the cracks (I think of them as faces with wrinkles) with gold, creating a work of art.

And Jesus promises in Luke 4 to have fulfilled the Isaiah 61 prophecy, to lovingly “bind up and heal the broken-hearted.”  In fact, he was known to give preferential attention to broken creatures over the arrogant, self-serving ones who fix themselves, thank you.

I will conclude this tome with the phrase of good tidings offered liberally in the performing arts, break a leg.  Essentially reverse psychology, to appease the spirits of fate, I prefer it with the Yiddish definition of “success & blessing” or Godspeed which offers a break from the universe in the form of success, prosperity, good fortune, advancement, or even generosity. So, break a leg, ya’ll.

“Won’t you please, please help me” (Beatles, Help! 1965).  About help, I’m guilty often of not wanting any.  Do you always accept help when it’s offered?  Or, are you the one wanting to help?

What if you don’t want any help or don’t need any help?  If you decline help when it’s offered, is it rude?  Are you inclined to ask for help when you need it?

Many people with disabilities today, usually don’t want help.  In fact, I believe that it is academic protocol to instruct us to refrain from willy-nilly helping a disabled person to navigate the ableist-world.  Helping a disabled person, because of their disability, is considered not in good form.

I was once employed at a University Psychiatric Hospital, working with a renowned psychiatrist on a childhood depression project.  As in every university department, we were assisted by work-study students.  Long story short, I was once lectured by my boss for asking our work-study student if, in the rain, she wouldn’t mind heading out into the nasty weather to pick up our mail from a next-door building.  “She’s depressed, you should just tell her what you want from her, don’t ask if she wants to help you out, it’s her job and she knows that.”

The biblical Great Commission and so much of the New Testament preaches to help others, but is that help misconstrued in today’s social climate?  If you try to help somebody, does it make them feel lesser than you?

Is help a handout?  Are we so caught up in earning our way through the merit system, that we can’t see the forest for the trees, declining any help, always and forever because it was offered by grace, not earned through merit?

Is help interfering with independence?  Oh, to be sure, we are an independent lot, we Americans.  As we age, however, our independence begins to wane and we discover we need someone to help from time to time.  “Help, I need somebody, Help, not just anybody, Help, you know I need someone, help” (Beatles, Help! 1965).

“I’ll do it myself.” Sound familiar?  Most kids from three to ninety-three assert their independence this way.

 “If I want help, I’ll ask for it?”  Is it the more respectful way to be of help, to respond willingly and with verve, when asked for help?  I find, that sometimes with this tack, the former helper doesn’t want to help when you ask, because who is in control?  Their help is no longer on their terms, it is on your terms.

What happens when you can’t do it yourself?  I guess it’s different if you ask for help versus when you are offered help.  Or, in the wisdom of your age, you find it easier to humble yourself, changed your mind and opened the door to help.  “I know that I just need you like I’ve never done before” (Beatles, Help! 1965).

So, are we to stop anticipating or discerning that someone needs help, our help and just wait for them to ask?  Maybe some folks consider an offer of help, too intrusive or nosy.  How dare you notice that they might be struggling with something and think that you can make it better?  Again, does this make you appear arrogant, that you have the solution that they haven’t already considered and without you they couldn’t get by?

Presumably, the “helping professions,” jobs in which helping others through the social-impact sector, including medicine, nursing, psychotherapy/psychological-counseling, social work, life coaching, ministry, and education are in existence as a form of help to those who need it, and who ask for it.  People who fulfill these official helping roles are professional listeners, facilitators, and sounding boards.  Having gotten lost in empathy and compassion-tired in these tumultuous times, one could imagine that these folks could use a little help from a friend once in a while.

“Help me if you can, I’m feeling down And I do appreciate you being round.  Help me get my feet back on the ground.  Won’t you please, please help me” (Beatles, Help! 1965).  How can I help?

Sarcastically, a character in a British television show we just watched, said, “I guess you think recycling is a novel idea.”  In other words, you must have been living your life in a bunker if you don’t know about recycling.

Around for decades, officially, my mom famously employed her version of recycling since at least the sixties.  She re-used margarine tubs which the family hopefully deposited in a recycling bin somewhere when she passed, leaving dozens if not hundreds of them stored in a basement cupboard. She also sorted trash into burnable paperboard from landfill-bound other garbage.

Not everybody likes recycling.  Some folks prefer to pop everything used into the garbage, and that’s that.

Recycling isn’t just about stuff.    I mean, we recycle ideas all the time.  Memory itself is the epitome of recycling.  You recall something from the past and redesign it for use in the present.

The word-symbol, recycling pops up frequently enough in my dreams to seem, recurring.  Recurring dreams are really unresolved subconscious material trying softly to come out into the light.

What is recycling?  It’s essentially resurrecting something used, potentially destined for the trash bin, and using it again.  Most recycling is also repurposing, or finding a new purpose for that used thing.

Commercial recycling of aluminum cans (think soda, beer, energy drinks, or some cat food cans) make new aluminum cans, rain gutters, or window frames.  Plastic bottles (water, milk, laundry soap, etc.) can become buckets, outdoor play sets and lumber, new bottles, stadium seats, frisbees and other containers.

Glass bottles can become new jars, bottles, or fiberglass.  Steel/tin cans have become car or bike parts, appliances, new cans, or rebar.

Cardboard transforms into paperboard, the stuff your dry laundry soap, pasta, and cereal packages are made of, and in which other boxed items are sold.  Office paper and junk mail can become facial tissue, paper towels, toilet tissue, new computer paper or notebook paper.

So, what have you resurrected from the throw-away pile in your mind, to repurpose in 2022?  Perhaps you’ve buried it deep in the landfill of your subconscious.  How about experimenting with bringing it up into the compost pile, and plant some flowers or a tree into its new, rich, fertile soil.

Ideas usually come to me when I’m doing “something else,” or supposed to be doing something else, like sleeping.  Some of my more fruitful notions materialize in dreams.

Thoughts which become my columns come to me in the wee hours of the night when my desktop computer is asleep, like I should be.  So, the notes section of my cell phone is vastly overused, including its microphone.  It’s a wonder my notes icon doesn’t make the ding, ding, ding noise that signals an overload, that other mechanized items are apt to do.

I also resort to my notes to record thoughts when I’m jogging or hiking outdoors.  Ideas come when they come, at the most random times and they can flee, like a butterfly if I don’t get them recorded somewhere.  Little can frustrate a writer more than an idea, a really good one, that flew the coop.

I might be jogging to music and I’ve got the timer on for my workout, and I don’t believe I can also use my notes to record the ideas that seek my attention at that inopportune time.  I panic just a little and certainly lose my jogging-Zen, thinking, “hurry up before that thought goes the way of 8-track tapes.”

I might be gift wrapping a present when I suddenly think of an alternative way to make that soup, we were thinking of trying.  I was recently paying bills online when I came up with a time saving idea for packaging my homemade cookie gifts.

Ideas for reducing stress in my jaw come when I’m mindful that I’m clenching again.  That reminds me….  To be reminded of something is to rememorate or to be caused to remember.  Somewhere in our mental storehouses we experienced something that we now randomly recall, triggered by “something else” similar that we’d experienced before.

When we’re doing something else, we frequently get reminded of other related things.  Speaking of other – that’s what else means.  Else shares its origins with the words alien, alibi, and alter – otherness.

I don’t recall from what scenario we heard the expression, “what else ya got,” but we usually say this as ventriloquists for our cats when one of them turns up his nose at the food offering given to him or when a new recipe doesn’t pan out.  “Anything other than that, please.”

Alternatives.  Either we have an alternative or we feel our liberty is limited.  Surely there’s something other than this.  If given a choice, I’ll take the other one.

What else?  It’s probably not just men, or all men, but my experience with one man suggests that with the television, he prefers to know what else is on.  Rarely settled with what’s on, he wants to know his options for what else might be on.  “Can’t we just watch this,” she pleads.

Speaking of alternatives, ever since the reign of Queen Victoria in England, commencing in the early 19^th century, the advent of polite society initiated the replacement of vulgar “four-letter words” with polite ones.  This trend spread over the pond to the united colonies, and here we are.

Everybody knows the words that politeness has wrought and most of them are of the four-letter variety, in English.  One of the most prolific is, heck, for h-e-double hockey sticks; gosh for the Jewish preferred G-d; darn, for the jammed up run of water, with another m added for good measure.   Used mostly in the U.K., arse is a four-letter word replacing the crasser three-letter word it is substituted for.  Go figure.

Then there’s the words shoot or sugar for the French, merde, but these are not four-letter words, so we came up with the four-letter word, crap, because polite substitutes should at least resemble the masked cuss word, for emphasis as an exclamation of indignation.  However, some folks in polite society believe that the word crap is just as crass and impolite as the word it is intended to replace.

Cuss itself is probably another word for swear, which is not just considered impolite but ungodly as well.  So, I’m thinking that cussing is like telling white lies, they’re both on a continuum from bad to worse, as words of exclamation go.

But at least most impolite words and their replacements stick with one syllable, whether the word contains three, four, or five letters.  This, supposedly stays in effect for the emotional emphasis these words demand; although there are the full sentence substitutes such as, “gosh darn it to heck,” “not by a darned sight,” “just for the heck of it,” “we had a heck of a good time,” “what the heck?” and “you’re doing a heck of a job.”

No worries, newspapers and most other print media remain firmly ensconced in polite society’s norms and will replace any questionable impolite words with the other word, expletive.  I’ve tested this policy, my natural sarcasm overwhelming my polite facade in just one instance. Most people will quickly fill in the expletive-blank, because we all know the banned words.

Words for excretory functions, do not rise to the level of profanity, even though potty language is considered by most to be impolite.  Thus, the comedy of the Shrek movies offends only a minority.

Something else about our English language use of impolite words and their substitutes is that nearly all of them begin and end with hard consonants, making them closed syllables.  Apparently, this is for emphasis; that’s why we use them. 

Oh, and “something else,” what kind of four-letter word is work, word, love, loss, heap, more, best, sale, home, salt…?

I discovered a fun fact while doing a bit of research for this column.  One of the most far-reaching expressions in the English language is, OK.  Even though its origins go back to 1839, its ubiquitous use rival’s today’s text-friendly, LOL (laugh out loud).

“OK” was first used in a Boston Morning Post article as a joke, making fun of misspelling “all correct,” as “all korrect,” then abbreviating it.  The expression was inched up the popularity scale in “Old Kinderhook,” Martin Van Buren’s reelection campaign of 1840.

The word Jeep is a similarly abbreviated misspelling, for a military vehicle known as a “general purpose vehicle,” GP/Jeep. The Humvee was HMMWV or “high-mobility multi-purpose wheeled vehicle.”

“OK” made it into the Slang Dictionary of Vulgar Words in 1864.  OK, and its meaning as everything being all correct or alright, figured prominently in the 1967 Thomas Harris book, “I’m OK, You’re OK,” the most popular self-help guide ever penned.

Don’t we often say, “It’s OK,” when it’s clearly not.  For example, I tell myself it’s okay that I wasted all kinds of ingredients on a failed recipe experiment.  But it’s not.  I’m honestly kind of bummed that that recipe failed and I wasted a ton of money on ingredients, not to mention my energy.  I hate waste.

If somebody screws you over in some interaction, what do you say when they half-heartedly say they’re sorry?  You say, “it’s OK.”  But is it really all, correct?  No, by golly, it’s not OK.

And when someone asks, “are you OK,” usually we feel an obligation to say, “yes.”  I mean, how ungracious to say, “no, I’m not OK.”  And the former question might just be a passing conversation filler not unlike, “how ya doin,” not a genuine inquiry as to your emotional or physical well-being.

The tiniest troubles can pose the biggest threats to our well-being.  For example, I can climb up onto and over a boulder in the woods with little problem.  I can step onto or over a jutting rock, no problem.  But when my foot pounces upon an acorn or the tiniest piece of gravel, ouch.

Our minds and senses constantly scan the environment, checking against memory, for potential threats.  I’m surmising that’s probably why we notice the negative, the bad things that happen, first, and remember them longest, because they’re potential threats, triggering a physical flight or fight response.  Our minds and emotions try to resolve the resulting agitation by trying to “fix it.”

Don’t we just tend to focus on the little foxes and the negative things?  We can have all manner of wonderful things come down the pike toward us, but one negative nonce enters our life and it ruins our day.

Thank God for Facebook, where we post all the glorious stuff in our lives, our best selfies, encouragement, and prayers.  Meanwhile, we keep the disappointments, failures and cuss words to ourselves and quickly delete the photo-duds.

But we quickly dismiss the good things and positivity because they don’t threaten our well-being.  Speaking of well-being, let’s talk about not being OK. 

A year or so ago a certain royal couple, who left their job across the pond and immigrated to her home country, America, attempted, with their celebrity, to de-stigmatize mental illness.  You see, I thought mental illness was out of the closet years ago.

I’ve been wrong before.  Perhaps mental illness is still not on the table for open discussion in 2021.

Anxiety disorders, depression, substance addiction, bipolar disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder are several mental illnesses which come to mind as prolific in the world today.  One in five people will experience a psychiatric illness, each year. 

These disorders exist on a continuum from what the typical guy calls a normal reaction to a stressful world, to the incapacitating disruption of one’s life.  So, if someone asks you if you’re OK, maybe answer gently but honestly and receive a little help from a friend, as the Beatles sang, you’ll “get by with a little help from your friends.”

In a recent dream I was ticking off a list of one bubble-like, temporary obstacle after another, until I finished the list.  Lo and behold, another list popped up.

Does life imitate art, or is it the other way around?  In creative works of fiction, whether cinematic or written, there is no story plot without at least one obstacle or problem to be overcome. 

The logic would follow that without obstacles, we “have no life” or story with which to enhance the world. How does the narrative of your life give meaning to the lives of others?

We need not feel singled out that we have a problem to overcome or an obstacle in our way.  It’s one of the universals of life, so it seems.

The uniqueness we have as individuals is not that we face obstacles, because we all have to tackle problems.  Our uniqueness lies in what attitude, resources, assistance, and spirit we have stored in the bank of our souls to deal with said obstacles.

Even the games that we play, for fun, for challenge, or for competition, involve beating one obstacle over another until we finish – win or lose.  The satisfaction comes from overcoming one challenge after another and coming out on the other end, alive and kicking.

I want to leave you, in my last column of the year, with the expression, “it’s OK.”  You’ve done it.  You made it through another difficult year and whether you feel it or not, if you did your best, then it’s “all korrect,” everything is OK.

It’s what we’re used to.  Traditions are probably rarely based on absolute truth, but thrive on what we’ve “always done.”

For better or worse, we hand down from one generation to the next, our habits, rituals, beliefs, and information.  Don’t ask me why certain of these things pass down to our children and others don’t stick. Thus, you can’t blame everything on mom and dad, but some stuff descends like a thud.

My husband and I have been known to exclaim in astonishment upon observing our adult child, “Oh my goodness, she got a dose of that from you and a dose from me.  The poor child hasn’t got a chance.”  And, nothing touches this mom’s heart more than to see my grown daughter imitating something good that I’ve passed on to her. “You’re just like your father,” can be a blessing or a curse, hopefully a blessing.

We all want to live on in terms of a legacy, after we’re gone from this realm.  We’d like to transmit something good of ourselves to the generations.  That’s why we make traditions.

For example, Christmas.  The facts are that if your reason for the season is the birth of Jesus, you’ve got the date wrong.  But who cares?  Christmas traditions bring happiness in a world that has much to be unhappy about.

Happy birthday Jesus, anyway.  We’ve often included birthday cake on Christmas, just because of something akin to tradition.

The Christmas tree was traditionally a fir tree, a “paradise tree” commemorating the religious feast day of Adam & Eve, on December 24^th, in Germany.  This reminds me of a silly quirk of our times and technology.  When I text using the word “for,” more often than not, it materializes as fir.  Auto-correct thinks, uncannily that I’m obsessed with the fir tree.  Just to be clear, I am not.

We have entertained the gamut of Christmas tree traditions.  We used to get freshly cut evergreens or cut them ourselves.  Then, when our daughter was born in New Mexico, we bought a potted black pine tree for her first Christmas and subsequently planted it in the southeast corner of our property here in Pennsylvania where it guarded our home for many years.  For the last decade or more we have used an artificial tree, recycled from year to year but still managing to beautify our home for the holiday season.

The last few years, as we age, we threaten to relieve our holiday of the Christmas tree tradition, but as traditions go, our offspring will not allow that tradition to wane.  And, honestly it wouldn’t be “the same,” without that tree.

Should you suffer from short term memory loss, what you’re used to, what you’ve always done, keeping things the same, and how you think about things, becomes even more important than for others who just dislike change.  Traditions keep us going, putting one foot in front of another, through the seasons.

Something like body memory or pop-up memories can take over when mental memory fails, as long as nothing changes.  Woo-hoo, good luck with that.

What would we do without lights at Christmas time?  In the darkness of winter, Christmas lights illumine our way, brighten our countenance and lighten our burdens.

I think it was Prince Albert, the German spouse of England’s Queen Victoria who popularized the Christmas tree with candles illuminating it. Can you imagine candles on an evergreen tree?

I’m sorry if you don’t appreciate the Chevy Chase movie, Christmas Vacation, but I can’t move on until I mention two things from that film.  First, the vision of candles on a Christmas tree, reminds me of Uncle Lewis absentmindedly lighting his cigar next to the Christmas tree, wiping it out along with the cat, his toupee and the chair.  Second, Clark thanked his dad for passing down via tradition, “everything I know about outdoor illumination.” 

Christmas candles and the tradition of gift-giving are both symbolic of Christ as the light of the world, and his birth as the ultimate gift to humankind.  Purposeful or not, when we light the darkness at Christmas time and give gifts to one another, we’re imitating the Light of the World.

Stockings are hung after the tradition of Saint Nicholas, who as the story goes, after dark threw three bags of gold through an open window, to bless a family with a much-needed dowry, with one landing in a stocking.   And, the tradition stuck, as many of them do. 

Traditionally we had Christmas ham for our Christmas day meal.  I like ham.  Everybody else in the family tolerates it, for me, I think.  So, this year I’m starting a new tradition, “Greek for Christmas.”  We’re having Greek meatloaf, Spanakopita (the kids say mine is better than theirs in Athens or the islands), and salad scattered with feta and such.

Known for mix and match in my fashion, I’ll do the same for our Christmas meal and each element will be traditional somewhere.  The gingerbread, aka Jesus’ birthday cake, topped with a choice of raisin or lemon sauce is traditional at Christmas partly because it was thought a long time ago in England, my ancestral home, to be sacred and only allowed at Christmas or Easter.  Also, ginger calms the stomach which let’s face it, is way overtaxed throughout the holidays.

Happy traditions and Merry Christmas.

You’ve heard the joke shared when someone wants an adult beverage early in the day, “well, it’s five o’clock somewhere.”  My theme of this column is loosely based on that joke.

Someone, somewhere is paying for or being paid for something.  Let’s explore that idea of payment a little bit.

In our business, we casually but regularly use the concept of cost-benefit ratio.  Asking the question, “Is it worth the cost to do thus and such” is our oft-used measure of what goods and/or services to buy, how much to spend, and when to cut back, because the cost is too “dear.”

The word “dear” in this sense is something I had heard growing up, to mean, expensive.  As it turns out, the way we used to open a personal letter to someone, with Dear so-and-so, is related to this old-fashioned usage as something or someone precious, held in high regard, beloved, important, of high value or worth much in our estimation.

As to payment, it is often wondered, are we paid for what we’re worth?  Do you feel shorted on pay day?

Is it worth it to pay that much for that item?  For what it’s worth, I have opinions about having to pay the going prices in today’s market.  Is the price too high, for you?

Is the cost too high?  Is it worth it?  What’s it worth to you?  Is there a discernible equivalent value, worthiness?

Have you ever done something wrong and now someone wronged implies, “you’ll pay?” This pronouncement is their promise to correct you by making you suffer.  Their plan is to take something from you in repayment.

“If I do this thing, will I pay the price later?”  “I think this may cost me.”  In other words, will I suffer the consequences of my actions, or get away with it this time?

Then there’s payback which means exactly what it says, one has to pay back what we owe to whomever we owe it.  This kind of payback may or may not include interest on what we borrowed.  Interest can be tricky, as it can be a fair trade or it can be loan-sharking.  Either way, however, we usually agreed to the terms.

But, more often than not, payback is a form of revenge, even though it’s under the guise of reaping what we sow.  If it’s a person exacting the payback, it’s usually revenge, or the Hebrew bible’s “an eye for an eye” which in its original intent and language, was not payback but an effort to make an injured party whole.  As in, if your eye has been taken, I’ll give to you my eye so that you may be made whole.  But, we the people in our need to be right and to get what’s ours, not to mention living in a world of sin, made the “eye for an eye” scripture all about revenge.

Sometimes, if we do something hateful, dirty, cruel, or unkind to someone, we may almost immediately reap what we sowed.  If alert, we might recognize our wrongdoing and think, “well that was God’s payback.”

Maybe I could avoid payback if I “pay it forward.”  Why not?  Instead of paying back a person who did a kindness to you, you pass it on to another person.  Theoretically, they pass it on to another, and so on.  Thus, a pattern of kindness is generated.

Have you ever been dirt poor, or better yet, hit pay dirt? The former, “rock bottom” is the dirtiest of dirt.  The latter, sort of ground up rock containing bits of gold, could be said to be similar to the Beverly Hillbillies’ black gold; and yeah, me neither.

I have eaten a Payday candy bar.  But I don’t recommend them, on pay day or anytime, if you have a peanut allergy or dentures, for that matter.  It happened to be payday at the Hollywood Candy Company in Minneapolis, Minnesota when the caramel covered peanut nougat bar was first produced in 1932.  Since it was, duh, payday, someone suggested the name, and inventor Frank “Marty” Martoccio agreed.

I’m looking forward to payday.  So, if you feel so inclined to pay me back for anything I’ve done, in the “what goes around comes around,” way, could it please be for something kind or loving or benevolent that I’ve done?  Please forgive me if you’ve got something else in mind for payback, on payday.