What Does It Mean to Face Your Problems?

Wouldn't it be easier to avoid facing one's problems?  Even suffering is easier than facing one's problems -- for a while.  Eventually we put on our big girl or big boy pants and deal with things.  Here's a poem I wrote on the topic in 2005 about things that had happened years earlier.  Here it is years later and there are still many things that need facing - probably always will be.

FACING IT

 "Maybe you never get over anything. You just find a way of carrying it as gently as possible."  -- Bronwen Wallace

Facing it is deciding not to wipe blood off the floor

Well, not so much deciding, as letting it sit there, declaring itself.

          Facing it is sitting alone, 

          watching your 8-year-old play baseball

          in a park on a sunny day

          And when she makes her way around the bases, you think

                   If this is as good as it gets –

                   This is pretty good.

          Facing it is saying to a new lover,

          “What makes your life meaningful?”

          And if he says, “My gun collection,”

          disarming him with a smile

          and cancelling the next date.

          Facing it is seeing it in others

          – an isolated student or neighbour

          entombed in anger

          on the verge of explosion.

          So you listen, just listen – 

           a candle in a cave.

          Then facing it is writing it

          telling it

          to yourself, to another

          to the world.

          Facing it is accepting it

          with compassion and grace

          letting your heart grow wider

          and eventually

          scrubbing the blood off the floor

          packing up and moving on

                   and carrying it with you,

                     . . . gently

Do You Remember the Moment You Fell in Love?

I'm talking about a moment of realization, a moment when, in the blink of an eye, the person you've been seeing morphs into the love of your life.

No, no, I've said that wrong:  You morph into someone who wants to hang on to this lovely person that is hanging on to you.

Maybe it happens to both of you at the same time.

Hank told me that while in college, he met Melissa in a gaming club. They were both shy, but they both liked video games, particularly Halo 3.  He began going over to her place once a week to play. After a while, it seemed like he was going over every night.  Games can be quite addictive -- but so can girls.  At one point in the middle of a game, Melissa said, "Are we dating?" That was the moment.

My mother told me this story:  A suitor had hoped she would marry him.  He pursued her like a businessman seeking a merger or an amalgamation.  He was eagerly hoping to close the deal.  When she turned him down, he cried.  That was the moment when she fell in love with him.  His human side emerged and she reversed her decision.

"I remember the moment that I knew Jacob was the one."  Hannah told me this at lunch today.  She said, "I remember sitting on Jacob's bed at his mom's house.  I was 17, he was 21.  He was showing me his Buddhism books.  He was open and not self-conscious at all.  It was fun and joyous because we were so present and alive.  He wasn't teaching or lecturing or barraging me with his ideas - he was sharing his deepest state of being with me."

That's all well and good for them with their innocent, unjaded youthful love.  What about people like me?  I've been around the block so many times, the city gave me my own passing lane.  I see the transition from friends to life partners mathematically: 

When the respect (r), gratitude (g), and fun (f) you experience is greater than the frustration (fn) and irritation (i) you experience, you decide that perhaps this one is a keeper:

when r+g+f > fn+i = ♥

That's the theory.  Here's what actually happened:

I had been seeing him for a while, but I was not worried about where it was going.  We lived in different cities and we had our own lives.  A year into the relationship, I accompanied him to Margate, Florida, to look after some of his mother's issues.  Afterwards, we took a side trip to Key West.  We left cold, snowy Canada for the warm, sunny Keys.  It was fun and kind of amazing being there.  I remember the exact corner where I was standing when I wisely connected those feelings to the fellow who had brought me there.  I remember thinking, "I should take this guy seriously."

I did.  I still do.

What about you?  Was there a moment?

Just to balance the romantic love moment with reality, an equally worthy blog could be on the topic, "Can you remember a moment when you knew it was over?"  Now created by request.  Here.

Does It Get Any Easier, Part 2

When I was 29, John, my 19-year-old student was struggling with difficult personal decisions.

Problem 1

He realized that he was no longer in love with his high school girlfriend who was still living in his home town.

Problem 2

He had fallen in love with his best friend's girlfriend who was also in love with him.

I didn't know any of this when he preceded me up the stairs one day after class.  On the landing before opening the door to the fifth floor, he turned towards me and, near tears, said, "Does it get any easier?"

At the time I was struggling with my own dilemmas.  A few years earlier, I had put 3000 miles between myself and an ex, but relationships seemed to get worse and worse.  Now, my boyfriend of two years was becoming jealous and controlling.

I gave my student an off-hand reply.  We became friends though, and over the years, we did what we could to help one another with our problems.  Now we are both much older, so I thought I'd revisit the question.

So John, let me ask you, "Does it get any easier?"

Here's his reply:

I was talking about this with my teenage daughter yesterday, because she is going through a stressful week.

She said:  "I imagine that when I'm an adult I won't have all this worry and stress about school, but then I'll have bills to pay and I'll have to find a place to live so maybe it won't be easier."

 I said:  "You're right, things don't really get easier.  But, that being said, it seems to me that certain times of life in retrospect are very difficult.  In my experience, most people find teenage years very difficult, even if they have fond memories of that time.  Also, the first couple of years after the birth of a child are very difficult."

I wanted to be honest, but affirm her truth:  that she was going through a hard time and that she had a father that understood that.  I would add that moving or finding a new job are also difficult.  Moving, finding a job, and ducking rockets from Hezbollah all at the same time is even more difficult.  So you were right when you told my 19-year-old self that it gets weirder.  However, when we're young we're not so aware of the rhythm of life so everything seems like it will last forever and that makes those intense years difficult.  I'll quote from a magazine article I read:  "I can't say I know more than I did back then, but I have more experience not knowing it."

As a scientist, not as a father, the question makes less sense to me now than it did at 19.  To paraphrase Jaron Lanier (author of You Are Not a Gadget), there is either something weird about time or there is something weird about consciousness.  "Does it get" implies a linear passage of time that might not be scientifically correct, and "easier" implies a consciousness that is having qualitative experience and as scientists we know that we know almost nothing about self-aware consciousness.  Again, your original answer suffices.

 I'm sorry for answering so seriously, without a drop of humour.  As we know, gravity is the weakest force in the universe.

 There's probably a cosmic balance to the easier/harder question:

1. Having patience gets easier.  Having energy gets harder.
2. Cooking gets easier.  Matching calories to metabolism gets harder.
3. Getting money gets easier.  Getting free time gets harder.  Or the reverse.  That's the deal.
4. Getting laid gets easier.  Getting hard gets harder.
5. Apologizing gets easier.  Screwing up gets easier, too.

------end of John's reply.

I imagine it's different for everyone.  Experience with difficulty usually helps.  The second time is still hard, but you know you can survive it.

What do you think?  Does it get any easier?

Are You Holding the Wrong Hand?

The neurosurgeon found me in the hospital waiting room and said the surgery had been a success.  After four hours, it was finally over.  He had  removed most of the spousal unit's meningioma.  A meningioma is a benign tumor growing in the lining of the brain.  You can see where it is from the MRI, but you don't know what you will find until you get in there.  If it's spongy, you can suck the tumor out with a straw.  If it's hard, you have to chip away at it.  In any event, the surgeon got most of it out and Ron was doing great.  He was being transferred to the intensive care unit, and I could go up in 15 minutes.   I was relieved and eager to see him.

To get into the ICU, I had to identify myself through an intercom.  If acceptable, they would buzz and the doors would open.  The first time I tried, they told me to come back in 20 minutes.  The second time, the high wide doors parted like the Red Sea.

A nursing station was in the centre of the ICU area.  Around the perimeter of the room were 18 curtained areas, each containing an ICU bed, a patient, and numerous beeping monitors.

These cubicles were numbered.  Number one was to my left.  A nurse emerged from one of the rooms and I asked her where my husband was.  She thought for a minute, then said, "Room 10."

I walked around to Room 10 and peeked inside.  A man is lying under a sheet, moaning and snoring.  He looked awful.  The shape under the sheet seemed to be about the same height and girth as my husband's.  His head was covered with a turban of bandages.  His beard had been roughly shaven.  I had never seen my husband without a beard.  I had never seen anyone immediately after brain surgery.

I was ready to love this ragged, shipwrecked man.  I took his hand and stroked it.  He'd been through a horrible ordeal.

I held his hand, said soothing words, and waited... and waited.  He didn't wake up.

Hadn't the surgeon said that he was awake and asking for me?  I noticed a clipboard at the foot of the bed.  I delicately placed the hand back on the bed, and went to read the name on the clipboard.  Damn, I'd been holding the hand of some other guy.

I peeked in the adjoining rooms and found Ron in #12.  Except for the 50 staples in his head, he was his same handsome, bearded self.  "What took you so long?" he said.

**********

Whose hand are you holding?  

Could you be holding the wrong hand?

Is There a Silver Lining in This Personality Disorder Playbook?

A friend of mine, Chip, has the following qualities:  funny, witty, creative, smart, helpful, warm, generous,
and talkative.

Let's call these his ermine characteristics.

At other times he can be angry, very angry, irrational, arrogant, nasty, argumentative, rigid, and silent.  Let's call these his weasel characteristics.

The ermine is white in winter blending in with the snowy landscape.  When its fur turns brown in spring, it is called a weasel or stoat.  Same beast, different colourings.  They change to protect themselves from predators.  Perhaps Chip changes for the same reason.  I don't know.

In the 13 years that I have known Chip, from time to time, his weasel side would emerge.  He mostly stayed in when that happened, aware that he could be "moody" - his word.

When he's in a good mood, Ermine Chip refuses to talk about weasel behaviour and would immediately get weaselly when I try.  When he's in a bad mood, Weasel Chip does not seem self-reflective at all.  It is impossible to have a two-sided conversation with Weasel.  He does all the proclaiming, and whatever is going on is everyone else's fault.  Always.  In fact, even supportive, kind words said to Weasel are met with hostility.

Sometimes Weasel would take over so that Ermine went into exile for days and months.  Chip would seem to have a personality change and be almost unrecognizable.  During one of these times, I took Chip to a psychiatric facility.  They fed him and kept him for a week, eventually letting him out in much the same state he went in.  It took about a year, and the Chip I knew and loved gradually came back.

You may know people who somehow stumbled into adulthood with an undiagnosed mental illness.  They may be self-medicating with drugs or alcohol.  Having seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, they fear and reject psychiatric help.  They are suffering, but won't acknowledge it.

When I ask Chip how I can help, he says, "Love me," but that's getting harder and harder to do.

Have you been in a situation like this?  What happened?