The Heart of the Matter

The Heart of the Matter

These times are so uncertain

There's a yearning undefined...People filled with rage

We all need a little tenderness

How can love survive in such a graceless age

The trust and self-assurance that can lead to happiness

They're the very things we kill, I guess

Pride and competition cannot fill these empty arms

And the work I put between us,

Doesn't keep me warm

I've been tryin' to get down to the Heart of the Matter

Because the flesh will get weak

And the ashes will scatter

So I'm thinkin' about forgiveness

Forgiveness

Even if, even if you don't love me anymore

~Don Henley and Mike Campbell

This is a song I remember my Mother singing around the house. Mom loved it because of the forgiveness part of it. My Mother’s entire core was forgiveness. She could forgive anyone and I watched it work for her about a thousand times in a row. She kept doing it because it kept working but she really kept doing it because she felt it was indicative of love and compassion. I have heard people call her a spineless jellyfish who would get walked on but I guarantee you I have never met a soul on earth to date who had the solid character she had and when all is said and done and we buried her, her character is what has lived on…not anger and a sense of injustice.

Forgiveness is one of those topics that when you bring it up you want to hide behind a shield or even a suit of armor to avoid the mega spears thrown at you. It’s not because people are unwilling to forgive, I believe people are good overall and would love to be able to forgive…I think it’s because the idea behind forgiveness conjures up all the hurts and pain from whatever happened. THIS is valid.

Feeling hurt or terrorized by someone will absolutely bring on all the associated feelings. A person should not be made to feel guilty about being angry at being harmed. I just feel like when a person has hurt me, they gave me more than one little ‘gift’. They not only set down a very large basket on my front porch full of anger, sadness and sleepless nights, but they keep sending me presents every day of the year in the form of bitterness.

I really believe that the act of forgiveness has been massively misinterpreted by society. Somewhere along the line we equate forgiveness to hanging out on Saturday nights with the person who did us wrong. I look at forgiveness as a free gift, not a free pass. When I say it’s free, I don’t feel it is earned. If you believe forgiveness has to be earned, you may be confusing the actual meaning of the word with ‘trust’. Trust has to go through it’s stages. She would say, ‘Let’s start again’ and she wouldn’t necessarily put the ‘and forget’ part onto the end of forgive. How can you forget something that someone did to you? That would be asking your brain to perform its own lobotomy. It’s seldom physically possible to do. When someone gives trust or says something is forgotten, I believe that is grace. Admirable, but tough.

When Don Henley sang, ‘because the flesh will get weak and the ashes will scatter so I’m thinking about forgiveness even if you don’t love me anymore’ I believe he wanted to set things right before it was too late to do so. I have heard hundreds of stories from people who were tormented by having no closure when someone they know dies. That never leaves and rarely fixes itself. I am happy to say, I have no regrets with my Mother, our relationship was next to perfect. It’s because she would forgive me (and of course keep a close eye on me) ;)

I bring up my Mother a lot as my biggest mentor because I long to be like her. Her grace and compassion was given to those who didn’t deserve it and I would see them come to her hospital bed when she was dying and beg for forgiveness. She had already forgiven them and told them where she too was wrong in the situation. The look on someone’s face leaving the room after experiencing that looked like they were seconds away from collapse. They simply couldn’t put into words how exceptional she was. Why wouldn’t I strive to capture that as a personal character goal to work towards? I would stand in the hospital staring back at them as they left, not surprised by how Mom would handle them, but because the power of her forgiveness would silence everyone.

Powerful is not a word we usually associate with it. I have blogged before about how love seems to be a sign of weakness and what a prevailing force it is.

I know forgiveness is really hard. I know it hurts so so so badly. We need love and compassion to heal our wounds after someone has hurt us but I believe we need to show love and compassion to those who have hurt us so the world won’t lose forgiveness altogether. How will we ever know what it is if we haven’t been forgiven? How will we know what to do if we haven’t experienced it first-hand?

The only thing that allows me to forgive someone is because I have been forgiven by someone even though I didn’t ask to be forgiven. I felt so undeserving of their forgiveness and they showed it anyways.

Now, for those of us who have hurt someone, we can speed up the process by at least asking for it. But isn’t it overwhelmingly magical when it’s just given? I believe it’s our responsibility to pay that forward too.

I have spent hours lying on my bed staring at the ceiling amazed by forgiveness, amazed by compassion and humbled by the love I have been shown. It set me on a thought process where I started to see that more anger won’t fix anything. Action is needed, sure but love historically has prevailed and I believe it is about to make the biggest comeback….if for no other reason than we are running out of options. ;) Why are we so reluctant to go there? Is it to avoid future hurt? I don’t think forgiving someone protects us from future problems nor does it induce future hurt. It seems to be its own thing.

Maybe love never left…and the comeback is just in my life.

Making shapes out of the clouds,

Karen :)

“When you forgive, you in no way change the past - but you sure do change the future.” ~Bernard Meltzer

Are you waiting for others to change?

Have you ever sat in therapy or with a counselor…even in a friend’s living room and they dispensed some really great advice or just said something remarkable and you found yourself saying, “Yeah, well tell that to__________” (insert boyfriend, girlfriend, wife, husband, child, teacher or politician’s name)?

I had a really good habit of doing it most of my life. I’m still not completely over it, but my realization of what is wrong with that is assisting me in moving forward in strides now as opposed to the baby steps or even backward movement I was experiencing before.

In my assessment, my blame was probably put in the right place. The people who abused me WERE in the wrong. You won’t hear me stick up for them. The assaults against me WERE wrong. You won’t hear me defend those who did it. However, the sentence has rendered itself completely useless in my vocabulary. I can’t ever remember a friend responding by saying, “Yes let’s call them up and tell them.” It’s just banter that happens between friends or in therapy.

I believe the point of the sentence is to alleviate our own grief or guilt whether warranted or not. We’re basically saying, “I’m not the problem, they are.” Once again, let me establish they very well may be the problem indeed! The issue I see is that the sentence puts all potential progress at a standstill where it can either rot or fester. The deterioration of our character is sure to follow, at least for me it did.

The sentence stopped me from zooming out. When I think of the word perspective, I always think of my Father who built his own airplanes. He used to say, “Don’t worry about it. You’ll never see it from thousands of feet.” I believe he said it in relation to the blemishes on our lives. We quite often are so zoomed in on something, we don’t know how to back off a bit. I remember the first hair salon I worked in, my boss called me over during a haircut and pointed back at my client. The bottom line of the hair was slightly crooked. She said, “When you make a cut, take a few steps back and do a quick assessment.” She taught me perspective.

When I zoom out on the people who I believe own the blame, I realize that the farther you zoom out, the clearer the picture. You start to see the inherited or environmental problems people have. You start to see where their baggage came from. You begin to see that their actions are a direct result of something much bigger. When someone snaps at you it may be because they are still dealing with childhood abuse or damage. So, saying something like, “Yeah, well tell that to__________” is not going to change them or their actions. If they were TOLD to do stuff their whole life and were never TAUGHT to make decisions and choices, you telling them isn’t going to work either. The foundation we established from childhood tends to be the determining factor in how long the building stays up. How well we were raised can have absolutely nothing to do with our poor adult choices or it can have everything to do with them. The point is, we simply DON’T KNOW.

My next instinct after getting over this hurdle was to say, “Well, screw them, I can’t change them.” What generally and sadly…and truthfully happens to those people is they get thrown into a bin of people who cannot be changed. We use phrases like, “yeah well the world is a tough place” or “too bad, they aren’t my problem” or “life’s a bitch, that’s the reality”.

There are cases where we cannot change people. It can be argued that nobody can change anybody. But this fact has been overused about as much as pop music has been overplayed. How do we graduate to a higher level of humanity and move onto something greater than ourselves? For me, it’s been the word forgiveness. You’ll hear me say, “I don’t have to date them, marry them, hang out with them, go for drinks with them” a lot. Forgiveness doesn’t necessarily mean you are relieving them or rewarding them but it does mean you have graduated to a higher level of being the bigger person and have learned what taking the high road makes you capable of accomplishing. It means you want to be able to look at yourself in the mirror. It means you can come to at least the consensus that they are very, very messed up and therefore their mean spirit was cooked up in a lab somewhere or they seriously just don’t know what they are doing or have done to you. Sometimes, it’s a simple case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and where we were dropped on the earth gave a bad start.

I’ve also been learning that there are synonyms you won’t find in a book. Depression can come out as anger. Jealousy can be disguised as hate. Abuse can be lack of control. I know it’s so hard to zoom out on these people we wish could change, but I feel so very triumphant when the love I show can turn someone around. We don’t have to view love as mushy and weak. Love outside of the current media portrayal is a prevailing force stronger than anything. It flies in under the radar sometimes while other times it smacks you directly and humbles you to an apple high. It should at the very least be our first line of defense and attack…and at the very most; it should be overwhelming our arsenal to assist in the healing our families and friends need so desperately.

Oh by the way, my initial question, “Are you waiting for others to change?” I don’t think anyone will admit that is what they are doing when they are doing it. I sincerely don’t expect a “yes” from anyone.

Rest assured though, I believe if we aren’t willing to change ourselves or our situation…it’s EXACTLY what we are doing. ;)

MUCH love on ya!!!

Karen :)

“People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is Lonely Being Right!

You may have seen in my kitty section, there is a picture of Tabby who is a feral I've seen in the back parking lot behind my apartment building. Unfortunately, he is far too wild to let anyone near him. In the last year or so a kitten who looks pretty much identical to him has been hanging around. They are so indistinguishable from each other that I think it’s a family member. Together, they secured the back lot and it’s one of the only parking lots I have seen in Los Angeles where there are only two cats. (Right now I think the statistics are 4 million strays in LA, so make sure you adopt and spay/neuter)

I have seen other cats come in and these Tabbies have driven them out. I have never seen them fight with each other up until recently though. The original Tabby is one that Filthy would fight with (the stray that I had for 3 years who I lost last year) Well, after this fight finally happened between the two, the younger one has now driven the older one out. I did see the older Tabby up on a rooftop last week not looking too good, so in looking back I wonder if Filthy was getting sick and that is why he was also driven out. Cats quite often get more defensive and ornery when they are sick.

Well obviously this happens in nature, although not for one minute do I believe these outdoor cats are part of the wild animal kingdom, that’s just society screwing something up. Whatever the reason, there is one kitty left to sun himself back there. I didn’t see him today because it was raining in LA, but after the fight happened, he seemed to enjoy his kingdom for a time but he grew a bit bored and dare I say lonely. (it’s an odd trait to give to cats who are so independent) The leaf blower came out earlier in the week and he took off scared.

How many times do we do this? I am known to become crabby when I don’t feel good. I know it’s not a perfect parallel, but some things just spur a few thoughts from me. So many times we have to feel like we are right and we drive people away from us out of principle. Sure, we have the space to ourselves, bask in the sun. But the cats looked happier and formed a better team when they were together. (I know, I know…it’s just how it goes) Do we become any happier when we are right and alone? Are we driving other people out because they are no good to us anymore? Do we discard them because they are sick, sad, lonely, depressed or low on the totem pole?

We have the capacity to cut each other some slack and get over ourselves. As people with the capability to show love and compassion, why are we so consumed with marking our territory over being inclusive and loving? Sure, that may be our instinct to survive and protect our own interests as well, but I personally want more out of my life than mere survival.

Much love on ya!
Karen :)

"There is nothing in the world more stubborn than a corpse: you can hit it, you can knock it to pieces, but you cannot convince it." ~Alexander Herzen

Living in Layers

"Life is the art of drawing without an eraser." ~John W Gardner

I stared at this quote for probably 15 minutes this morning and then thought about it long enough to start writing.

Not even forgiveness is an eraser although we are often told to forgive and forget. I don’t necessarily buy into it. I mean, it’s a lovely thought to think we can completely forget the wrongs (especially if they are ours!) but I know I haven’t forgotten about the things that have happened to me nor do I expect the people I have disappointed will have erased it from their memory.

What I hope for with forgiveness is a tighter relationship between people. When we screw up, I believe a callus is built on our hands, a toughness which makes us ready to combat the next thing together as a unit. We haven’t ditched the good times and we haven’t forgotten the bad ones, but we have decided that the relationship is worth fighting for despite the bad times.

I admire visual art immensely. I love simple pencil drawings but I adore paintings. If he messes up, it’s very difficult to take the paint off of the canvass and so the painter has to work in layers. If he’s really proficient in his work, every layer may be on purpose, but I have talked to painters who have just learned to cover up the mistakes. Then, for others they view each layer as part of the journey and would not want them to be taken away because simply there is a beauty in each brush stroke. They took a chance mixing a new color or applying a thicker amount to the picture. Their risk may have been high, but their open-mindedness exposed a better painting in the end that even surprised themselves.

I feel this way about life. We don’t have an eraser. But if we are open to whatever the next thing is for us, we may just find that each layer that was a perceived error is going to add a rich texture to our character and biography. I would much rather have the lines, wrinkles, calluses and muscle from my experiences than a blank background of sheltered skin. There is nothing remotely interesting about that. :) Nor does it prepare us for the next storm.

I hope that whatever you are painting today, you do it boldly, without caring what anyone thinks about it and if you mess up, you can with a few brush strokes, turn it into your masterpiece where you can reflect upon the layers. After all, I believe it is our layers that make-up who we are…not a blank canvass.

We can always cover it up with a superficial eggshell wash at the end. hahahaa

Be good to you!
Karen :)

I know I began with a quote, but I must add this one too;

"Every child is an artist, the problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up." ~Pablo Picasso