Did Someone Rip Your Head Off?

"Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something and has lost something." - ~H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Today, I took the brunt of someone’s frustration with someone else in their life. It’s a classic case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Luckily, I understand it’s not me, so I don’t have to internalize it and feel bad.

This happens in relationships where we are someone’s punching bag. If the H. Jackson Brown Jr quote is true that everyone is afraid of something, loves something and has lost something, then it would stand to reason we all have the capability of running into someone at the exact moment they are experiencing something scary.

It reminds me of a time I was at the Airport and someone freaked out quickly and said, ‘My contact lens! Everybody stop!’ Well, there must have been many sympathetic people who have lost their lenses before because they obeyed the guy immediately. Everyone froze as though they were turned to stone by a wicked witch. They had the respect to sympathize because they had been through it. Most people instinctively crouched instead of walked and started to scour the floor. Someone finally pointed and said there it is and the person who lost it, picked it up and walked over and gave a very grateful handshake with a big smile and said thank you. Their thank you was followed up by an apology to everyone for snapping their heads off at the moment they realized they lost it.

This is a case of cutting each other some slack because the people who also wear contact lenses could relate to the loss the man was feeling.

People who have fully experienced fear and loss seem to be the best at giving hugs. They have the ability to diagnose the problem almost without asking and I think they put themselves in the shoes of the truly sad. They can put themselves there easily because they have either been there or are going through the same thing at the same time.

It’s one thing to comfort sadness, but I believe it’s a completely different skill to comfort anger. It’s so easy to think it’s directed to us especially if they are within inches of our face. Now I have always said that we don’t have to be anyone’s punching bag, but in the same token, if it truly isn’t towards us, if we are just witnessing frustration, the best thing we can do is crouch down and help look for the lens. The people at the airport were interested in a solution first. Then they all smiled and giggled at the hot-headed man because I think they may have done the same thing; that is what it means to cut each other some slack.

The brunt of frustration that I received wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle. I tried to focus on coming to a quick sympathetic solution and then it calmed down fairly quickly. I received an apology and we laughed about it. I cut the slack because I recognized that I had done the same thing to someone who didn’t deserve it. It’s another form of paying-it-forward. Had it escalated to the point where it passed into abusive language, that would be a different story. This was a fairly easy fix when rational dialog was applied. I just received it at the exact time of day they were feeling especially hot-headed. No big deal, people are passionate.

December can be a different type of stress for people too. The holiday season is supposed to be cheerful, but truthfully, it’s a time when people really beat themselves up for not having the money for gifts. If you are starting off with new kids in the family, my humble suggestion is to set a standard of one or two gifts in the event that in future years you don’t have the money. I think too many people have gone overboard in the past, so the expectation is to one-up the last year or at least match it. But, kids are more resilient than we think. If we explain that money is tight and that it’s just a situation that has nothing to do with our love for them, most kids (if we give them the credit) are pretty understanding. Taking them to see less fortunate people can also put it in perspective. There are things in this life that truly deserve our attention and our frustration over the small things.

It’s good to know that we aren’t alone in our fear, frustration, anger and loss. There is a good chance someone you meet today will be feeling it. The best thing we can do is show some tolerance, cut some slack and offer a hug or solution.

I am so impressed with how many people in my life have offered to be a listener. That is more valuable to most people. Coming to a solution is much easier than trying to get rid of fear and the feeling of loss.

Glad I don’t wear contact lenses, they sound like they cost a hundred thousand dollars each,

Karen :)

One of my very favorite quotes;

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” ~Plato

Thanks for Hitting Me

Some of what is in the video is written below; (for those who prefer reading!) :)

PART 1:

PART 2:

I read an article about this man Duane Innes who was driving along highway 167 and he saw a pick-up truck drifting across lanes of traffic, sideswiping a concrete barrier and continuing forward at about 40 mph.

Duane who is a manager of Boeing’s F22 fighter-jet program dodged the truck, looked back and saw the driver slumped over his wheel. The article said ‘without consulting passengers in his minivan’ as he said there was “no time to take a vote” he kicked into engineer mode.

"Basic physics: If I could get in front of him and let him hit me, the delta difference in speed would just be a few miles an hour, and we could slow down together," Innes explained.

"We realized he wasn't slowing down, and if he hit someone at full speed, it would've been a very bad scene," Innes said. The intersection with Southwest Grady Way was a few hundred yards away. "He could've very easily unknowingly taken out a whole row of traffic."

So he pulled in front of the pickup, allowed it to rear-end his minivan and brought both vehicles safely to a stop in the pull-off lane.

It turned out the driver was an 80 year old man named Bill who didn’t know he had a minor heart attack two days before passed out on his wheel from poor circulation. His foot was resting on the accelerator.

The cool part was how Duane viewed it. He felt like this man was deserving of a few extra lives seeing as he spends his life doing volunteer work for the Special Olympics and Food Drives. It was pretty cool that the insurance company sent a nice letter to Duane commending him and they covered the costs.

So of course, it’s a great story but I loved that the two men and their wives went out for dinner after. Duane is 48, Bill is 80. Their wives are probably close to the same age.

I can imagine the stories they must have shared outside of the event as they got to know one another.

Now, I have been out to dinner with grandparents. Many of you take your parents out to dinner. But when in life do you get a chance to get to know the unlikely, potential friends out there?

Of course we like to meet up with people who are like us, people our age or from our town. I have learned that most of my tolerance comes from hanging around people who are actually nothing like me. Growing up, I felt uncomfortable around people who didn’t speak English. I have never been racist, but I simply didn’t know what to say, do or how to act around them. It was foreign territory. If I saw a homeless person, I would look the other way not out of lack of compassion but because I didn’t know what to do with the information. Elderly people at church freaked me out, heck Santa Claus freaked me out.

The problem was I lived on a 33 acre farm in a rural area. My school was up the road, my church was half a mile past that, I hung out with the girl behind our property. The few moves I did make across Southern Ontario were still small town with populations under 10,000. It wasn’t until I started acting and had to go into Toronto all the time that I learned to integrate with people who were not like me. A person’s color never freaked me out. I was more uncomfortable around a 45 year old couple sitting on stools. I never had to deal with that. My world was my family, my friends, my teachers. The people in my church who were in their 40s and 50s were the stern ones who disciplined kids and gave you dirty looks if you didn’t behave. The Elderly people would at least give candy but they still unnerved me.

I was at some little restaurant on Queen Street in Toronto and I was waiting for an audition. There were no seats and this couple in their 40s gave me one of the chairs from their table. At the same time, some creepy guy tried to give me a bar stool beside him. I looked desperately at the couple and the woman said, “she’s sitting with us, thanks for offering”. Well, it was awkward, but I was forced to sit with them as it was the better choice. She seemed very concerned I was walking around Toronto alone and the two of them asked some none-personal questions, just being friendly.

We ended up having such a great time that I nearly missed my audition. It was a game-changing moment for me having food and drinks with complete strangers.

After taking the Greyhound bus into Toronto a few times a week, I went from reading books to chatting with people beside me. I now have no problem talking to people at airports, airplanes or subways. An airplane ride usually forces you to get to know someone you normally wouldn’t choose to have in your life.

I see people do this online. They will reach out to people who are like them all the time. If you are looking to date or for a partner, it makes sense you would do that. If you are looking for a friend, you tend to find the same sex, same age group. We hang out with musicians who like our type of music and I talk a lot about like-minded spirits coming together in a community.

But what if we made it a goal to get to know someone who is nothing like us? What if we set out to have a conversation with a stranger who has nothing in common? How would you interact? For me, I tend to do is listen more than talk. You just never know who you will meet and what you will find out. I also think it makes us more tolerant and certainly travel will do that too. Many of us stay in our small towns thinking the whole world is supposed to be like that because it’s what we live.

It shouldn’t take a car crash or a disaster to open up our dining experience. I guess it all depends on our own agenda.

Staying off the 101 at rush hour anyways,

Karen :)

“The time is always right to do what is right.” ~Martin Luther King Jr.

Jumping in Leaves

We had a gorgeous, great big Maple tree outside our farmhouse that shed enough leaves in the fall for a really large pile. I wish I could revisit it sometimes but sadly, the whole farm is now a Toyota Factory. But, the human memory is an amazing thing where we get to store these childhood times and bring them up when we want.

Now what was I saying? ;) Think, think…Oh yeah…

This Maple tree also provided good shade for the lettuce in Gramma’s flowerbed. I think I have mentioned before that Gramma lived on one side of the house. The farmhouse had 20 places for children to invade (adults refer to them as ‘rooms’) but it was all over the 33 acres where we truly explored. I could write a whole book just going on and on about my farm. It was a haven for children. It’s kind of how I begin to picture heaven because children were crazy-free there. (oh which made me think of the time I wandered out the long lane and a woman picked me up and brought me back in MUCH to my Mother’s horror-don’t think that would happen these days, huh? Lol!) I laugh now…

With all the memories I have on the farm, that tree was a big highlight for me. It’s where my siblings and I actually got along consistently (they might tell you they were nice to me so they’d have one more worker to rake leaves…the corn field where I would get beat up and left for dead by them was another story) Our dog Crystal who was a gorgeous lab/german shep mix loved playing in the leaves too. She would retrieve all sorts of things we lost in the pile like Johnny’s glasses and a few other odds and sods. In the winter, she’d find lost mittens in the snow too. Bless her heart she retrieved stray eggs from random chicken nests (our chickens were free-range) and her soft mouth didn’t put a crack in them until she dropped them down on the cement pad outside the kitchen. But man she looked so proud of herself for ‘helping’.

The one thing you have to accept about living on the farm is that it isn’t all farm animals but there are weasels and snakes, spiders and other creepy crawlers. I am not afraid of any of them. I have a good understanding of what makes nature go round. I’m not about killing something I don’t like and I would gladly pick up a snake or let a spider walk along my arm. (mind you, that was Canada, I have been informed to let them be down here…ha!)

The only bad memory I have of a snake was one that was in and around our pile of leaves (‘cause bless their little snakey heart, they love leaves too!) The bad part stems from my Father killing this one who was around our pile. I won’t go into detail how he did it, but I will just say bless his big Daddy heart for wanting to protect us. I still wish he didn’t though.

Since the whole incident, I haven’t been willing to climb a big maple and jump in the leaves and this is because of the bad memory. I’ve done this a lot in life too. You become nervous about entering relationships when you’ve had a bad one. You question new people, thinking they are also a snake in the pile and that some massive attack is imminent and you just have to wait for it to come down heavy on ya.

But, slowly you get over the baggage and you feel like, "Great! This is a no-drama incident!" and you feel fortunate you can just play in leaves with no snakes. But I am having a new revelation (my revelations are ongoing and always subject to change) where maybe we didn’t look close enough at the snake to see what the deeper meaning was.

In this case, the snake wanted the exact same thing as we did (well, I don’t know if he wanted the camaraderie like us but you get what I mean) He was just venturing out and looking for shelter and warmth. He didn’t know our Daddy was territorial. He basically was in the wrong place at the wrong time and nobody cared about his ability to fit in with the ecosystem or how he was able to control the insect population.

Much of my life I have been making reference to people like in the music industry as ‘snakes in the grass’, but really it’s not fair to the snakes. Ha! But maybe when we think someone is out to get us or we think they are lurking, it isn’t as bad as we perceive. Maybe there are times we just didn’t look at their motivation properly. It seems like everyone just wants to fit in somehow, wants to be loved or just needs some shelter. I believe the problem is how they present themselves to us and how we present ourselves to them. Without properly communicating what we need, we can come off snakey, needy or with ill-intent. Our baggage and history can taint our true motivation and we offload that to the next guy.

What I have been trying to do (and I do mean TRYING-it’s a battle) is learn how to not only look at a person’s heart before their action but understand where they, (not to mention I) fit into this whole world. Just because someone comes off rough to me doesn’t mean they don’t want the same things. Just like a person covered in tattoos is not evil, neither is someone who has a bad temper or a brash demeanor. If I can get past the façade long enough to see what their motivation is, I may find that they essentially want the same things out of life and that it may just be my intolerance to a different personality that causes my perception of them to infiltrate my life negatively.

This is very freeing to me. It means I don’t have to inherit their baggage!! That is a major step. I not only don’t have expectations of other people, but I feel like what makes someone different than me can draw me a bit closer to them in the spirit of tolerance (as a human…lol…I don’t have to live with them or marry them…hahaha) They have their place in this world, I have mine. We can build boundaries, but we certainly don’t have to build hate based on society’s perception. I love my Father and his heart was as pure as that snake’s, but I still wished they could have resolved their differences. :)

In moving forward, I don’t think I would feel concerned now about jumping in leaves (both in reality and metaphorically) because I am seeing how we are all just trying to get a nut, ya know? When the end of the day comes, we all are just trying to find some warmth and shelter.

Hope your weekend ROCKS!!
Karen :)

"We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same." ~Anne Frank