- my concern that you don't agree with me about its offensiveness
- my annoyance (and what underlies it) that you'd rather watch that tonight than finish spending the evening together
Thursday, November 07, 2013
As much as I disdain that show . . .
. . . , I don't know which is greater:
Oh, yeah. How could I forget to mention THAT one?
In reflecting on tumultuous autumns at the end of this post the other day, I somehow forgot about that worst autumn of all, of my own making, as we were waiting to learn the extent of my consequences. It has taken eighteen years for that to start feeling at all like anything less than a terrifying thing I'd rather not have in my neural pathways anymore. It wasn't technically autumn when we got the word that we'd have to report it, just after getting back from Labor Day weekend in Maryland. The following weekend was wretched, as we knew I was in grave jeopardy. I'm glad Waterworld was so awful, because I'd hate to have such terrible memories associated with a movie I'd want to see again! That drive-in is gone, too.
Anyway, it would take another ten weeks to find out that I'd have to move out, another couple months thereafter to be evaluated and accepted into the treatment program, another two years before I was completely back home - a good deal of which delay ended up being outside of our control. I'm glad that I've learned that I don't have to be in control of everything, though I do still have to be reminded of that from time to time.
Anyway, it would take another ten weeks to find out that I'd have to move out, another couple months thereafter to be evaluated and accepted into the treatment program, another two years before I was completely back home - a good deal of which delay ended up being outside of our control. I'm glad that I've learned that I don't have to be in control of everything, though I do still have to be reminded of that from time to time.
The gift of thankfulness
This annual exercise in which a number of my friends are engaged isn't a matter of God needing our gratitude for his goodness. Rather, it is a reminder that we need: that all that we have has come from God, so as to replace any sense of entitlement or resentment in our own hearts with an appreciation for the abundant blessings we have.
I have never engaged in the public FB thank-a-thon, and I wish that I could say that is because my life is so full of gratitude that I don't need to express it so demonstratively. On the contrary, I often read my friends' expressions of gratefulness with a bit of a resentful spirit. "Oh, how nice that you can be thankful for your (dad, mother-in-law, childhood, etc.). Must be nice." Which is, of course, exactly the opposite of what my friends are hoping to inspire by their sharing. But my reaction is by no means their fault, and I find that I am starting to look for the kernel of commonality that I can find in each thing they share. I may not have a dad for whom I can feel mostly thankful, but I am grateful that my dad did take me in and try to make me his own, and that I learned so many things from my step-father that I am able to take on a lot of tasks that would otherwise be beyond me. My mother-in-law may have gone to her grave without forgiving me, but she made every effort not to express that to me, and my fatiher-in-law was genuine in his acceptance and forgiveness of me. My childhood memories may have a continual undercurrent of dysfunctions and pain, but there are many very fond ones, too.
So I thank you, God, for this life with which you have blessed and continue to bless me. I pray that you would help me to be less attuned to my regrets and more in touch with the many ways you reveal your presence and your love.
I have never engaged in the public FB thank-a-thon, and I wish that I could say that is because my life is so full of gratitude that I don't need to express it so demonstratively. On the contrary, I often read my friends' expressions of gratefulness with a bit of a resentful spirit. "Oh, how nice that you can be thankful for your (dad, mother-in-law, childhood, etc.). Must be nice." Which is, of course, exactly the opposite of what my friends are hoping to inspire by their sharing. But my reaction is by no means their fault, and I find that I am starting to look for the kernel of commonality that I can find in each thing they share. I may not have a dad for whom I can feel mostly thankful, but I am grateful that my dad did take me in and try to make me his own, and that I learned so many things from my step-father that I am able to take on a lot of tasks that would otherwise be beyond me. My mother-in-law may have gone to her grave without forgiving me, but she made every effort not to express that to me, and my fatiher-in-law was genuine in his acceptance and forgiveness of me. My childhood memories may have a continual undercurrent of dysfunctions and pain, but there are many very fond ones, too.
So I thank you, God, for this life with which you have blessed and continue to bless me. I pray that you would help me to be less attuned to my regrets and more in touch with the many ways you reveal your presence and your love.
Tuesday, November 05, 2013
Today's word
I love it when I know both the meaning and the pedigree of what is probably a fairly obscure word for most of the population.
Monday, November 04, 2013
Today's word
eristic \ih-RISS-tik\ - characterized by disputatious and often subtle and specious reasoning
So, is there any point in putting lipstick on an eristic pig?
Autumn 1972, and so on
Dad had a business trip scheduled to Pittsburgh, and for some reason it made more sense for him to drive than to fly, I guess. He never completed the business he was going there for. At some point as he neared his destination, he lost control of his VW bug and drove off the road. Only the combination of a guardrail and the rear-engine weight of the bug kept him from careering down a tall, steep cliff-side embankment to his death. I remember very clearly the adults discussing afterward that a normal car would have gone over the side. He almost died anyway. I don't remember anyone saying so, but knowing him I can say that he was certainly not wearing a seat belt, and I'd be stunned to learn that he was totally sober.
Mom went to to the hospital in Pittsburgh to which Dad had been transferred due to his life-threatening condition to tend to him, leaving us in the care of her aunt, who was in her late sixties. She ended up being gone for about a month. This was my first year of junior high, and I was having no difficulty at all adapting to the tougher level of classwork that kicks in around that point. I had considerable problem, though, with one of the junior high teachers, a nun who was either in the wrong profession to begin with or who had stayed in it too long, in my now grown-up opinion. She taught reading, and in my personal disdain for her I didn't do a bit of homework in her class while mom and dad were gone. She sent several notes home to my parents, but they grew increasingly crumpled in the bottom of my bookbag until mom brought dad home, at which point I was in the most trouble I'd ever been in.
[Until the following year, I was always in the more advanced of the two classes in each grade in my Catholic grade school. That would end because of this stubborn personality clash with this particular nun. Our classes split up differently for Math/Science versus for English/Reading, with the music and PE classes being all together (I think). My English teacher was so frustrated with the way things worked out with my "demotion" that he took me somewhat under his wing, and I became the first student from the "lower class" to receive the English award at graduation. One more junior high note: I'll never forget our excellent math teacher, who drilled the commutative and other properties into us by verse: "The ORDer of the ADDends, does NOT afFECT the SUM," is the only one I can recall now.]
Dad lost muscle control of one eye because of this accident. It was a strange introduction to the precision of legalese: he had an accidental death and dismemberment policy that would have compensated him for a loss of sight in either eye, but not for the use of the eye. (Not that that would have made his life any better.) He wore a patch over his glasses' lens for the rest of his life. As it happened, we got at least a few months respite from his alcoholism, as our family doctor told him that his chances for recovery might be better if he didn't stifle his healing through the continued presence of alcohol in his system. He'd eventually see a neurologist who would tell him that the nerve was permanently damaged and would never recover no matter what he did, after which his drinking resumed with a renewed determination over what he viewed as his lost drinking time and his now crippled life.
Two autumns later, during my freshman year of high school shortly after Dad died, I'd develop an unbearable unrequited crush on a classmate who would later become, in college, my closest friend for a while. Three years after that crush, my H.S. senior year, was that Thanksgiving weekend. In another two years, my then closest friend and I would turn back from the precipice of a developing set of feelings for each other, out of respect for a relationship she was already in - which was the right decision for both of us, btw. More recently, my mom (2001) and both of my wife's parents (2008 and 2010) died in the fall.
Whenever I make even the most laudatory of observations about the season of autumn, these types of memories and feelings are never very far from the surface.
Mom went to to the hospital in Pittsburgh to which Dad had been transferred due to his life-threatening condition to tend to him, leaving us in the care of her aunt, who was in her late sixties. She ended up being gone for about a month. This was my first year of junior high, and I was having no difficulty at all adapting to the tougher level of classwork that kicks in around that point. I had considerable problem, though, with one of the junior high teachers, a nun who was either in the wrong profession to begin with or who had stayed in it too long, in my now grown-up opinion. She taught reading, and in my personal disdain for her I didn't do a bit of homework in her class while mom and dad were gone. She sent several notes home to my parents, but they grew increasingly crumpled in the bottom of my bookbag until mom brought dad home, at which point I was in the most trouble I'd ever been in.
[Until the following year, I was always in the more advanced of the two classes in each grade in my Catholic grade school. That would end because of this stubborn personality clash with this particular nun. Our classes split up differently for Math/Science versus for English/Reading, with the music and PE classes being all together (I think). My English teacher was so frustrated with the way things worked out with my "demotion" that he took me somewhat under his wing, and I became the first student from the "lower class" to receive the English award at graduation. One more junior high note: I'll never forget our excellent math teacher, who drilled the commutative and other properties into us by verse: "The ORDer of the ADDends, does NOT afFECT the SUM," is the only one I can recall now.]
Dad lost muscle control of one eye because of this accident. It was a strange introduction to the precision of legalese: he had an accidental death and dismemberment policy that would have compensated him for a loss of sight in either eye, but not for the use of the eye. (Not that that would have made his life any better.) He wore a patch over his glasses' lens for the rest of his life. As it happened, we got at least a few months respite from his alcoholism, as our family doctor told him that his chances for recovery might be better if he didn't stifle his healing through the continued presence of alcohol in his system. He'd eventually see a neurologist who would tell him that the nerve was permanently damaged and would never recover no matter what he did, after which his drinking resumed with a renewed determination over what he viewed as his lost drinking time and his now crippled life.
Two autumns later, during my freshman year of high school shortly after Dad died, I'd develop an unbearable unrequited crush on a classmate who would later become, in college, my closest friend for a while. Three years after that crush, my H.S. senior year, was that Thanksgiving weekend. In another two years, my then closest friend and I would turn back from the precipice of a developing set of feelings for each other, out of respect for a relationship she was already in - which was the right decision for both of us, btw. More recently, my mom (2001) and both of my wife's parents (2008 and 2010) died in the fall.
Whenever I make even the most laudatory of observations about the season of autumn, these types of memories and feelings are never very far from the surface.
Sunday, November 03, 2013
More on the pursuit of happiness
I started developing this post in response to a friend's FB post from the other day that has stuck with me, and then realized that I simply had to have written on this topic before. Sure enough. So just a thought or two.
Our friend posted that, from now on, she is simply going to do what makes everyone else happy. And a friend of hers objected that no, she owed it to herself to seek her own happiness.
Oh, no, and no!
If we will simply focus on being the person we should be, on doing things that allow us to respect ourselves, our happiness (and sometimes sadness and every other appropriate emotion along the way; see that previous post) will occur as a natural consequence. But the single greatest thing we do to interfere with the emotions we wish to experience more frequently is to make them our goal. On the other hand, I find that when I make my goals to be thankful for the many blessings in my life and to spend time with the One who loves me most, my life tends to be more full of joy.
Our friend posted that, from now on, she is simply going to do what makes everyone else happy. And a friend of hers objected that no, she owed it to herself to seek her own happiness.
Oh, no, and no!
If we will simply focus on being the person we should be, on doing things that allow us to respect ourselves, our happiness (and sometimes sadness and every other appropriate emotion along the way; see that previous post) will occur as a natural consequence. But the single greatest thing we do to interfere with the emotions we wish to experience more frequently is to make them our goal. On the other hand, I find that when I make my goals to be thankful for the many blessings in my life and to spend time with the One who loves me most, my life tends to be more full of joy.
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