Peace, my heart, let the time for the parting be sweet.
Let it not be a death but completeness.
Let love melt into memory and pain into songs.
Let the flight through the sky end in the folding of the wings over the nest.
Let the last touch of your hands be gentle like the flower of the night.
Stand still, O Beautiful End, for a moment, and say your last words in silence.
I bow to you and hold up my lamp to light you on your way.
—Rabindranath Tagore
I sort of feel like Harriet, spying on people’s houses in the neighborhood! But there is just something so much fun about seeing holiday lights up, and how people decorate. The colors, the crisp air, a brisk walk at night. These are all within a few blocks of where we live – tomorrow, a trip in the other direction!
My knitting runneth over.
Back to work this morning. What should I bring to do at lunch?
Throughout my entire life, I go through periods of dormancy. It is hard to make a decision, duties and responsibilities are onerous, and the creative side is stagnant. And then the morning arrives when I am ready to pick up and do and go – the world is new and exciting and intense. Today is such a day, and it is grey and gloomy with the threat of rain. Usually hot chocolate, a fire, a good book, some knitting come to mind, but instead, my mind is revving up.
The last few weeks seem to have been a sea of angry, needy, demanding people who only want me to meet their requests. Never mind how their wants affect everyone else in the group, or me, or how their presentations negate any desire I may have to help them in the first place. Nor, it seems, do they ever stop to think that if they constantly demand and require that reciprocity may be something to consider! This kind of environment probably makes the best of us shut down, and that is exactly what I have done. Honestly, all this emotion has been overwhelming.
So what has brought about this change? I finally blew up yesterday at one individual who has demanded so much, and yet cannot get it that my requests, petty as they may seem, are equally valid. Yeah, that individual got mouthy, but the support from the rest of the people who witnessed it – and who have had to deal with this jerk – was great. I felt badly all day because I don’t like losing it, but sometimes you just have to let someone have it. I did, and now I am done, the line has been crossed. I’ve put up with the crap and shut down as a result.
In addition to this, I have found that, while I am enjoying photography and see where it can lead me, changing how I look and see things, I really need to have something in my hands through which I can put my manual energies – knitting needles, a paint brush. I really miss it when I don’t do it – I don’t feel like me anymore.
I expect I should make a concerted effort to remember this, and always have something at hand to work on, and making sure I do just that. Completing something with my hands gives me a very strong sense of satisfaction, and keeps me from going nuts. And if I look at my career counseling background, to not do this is anathema to my personality! I am an AIR combo of the RIASEC codes – artistic, investigative, realistic. Create, figure out, do it in the physical world.
So, this morning, up at 5 a.m.; coffee, essay, questions and answers for a test, update computer, download software, finish off a hat and mail it away, begin design for a new one, continue the shawl and mitts, think about and consider the photography class assignments.
Hibernation is over.
Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
–Martin Luther King, Jr.
Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Dec. 10, 1964
* * *
War: Today, North and South Korea have traded fire.
Anger: There is a person in my life – and those around this person – who is always angry about something. Drama everywhere, whether it is personal tragedy, dysfunctional family, or the fact that something is not a concrete, black and white, absolute fact. Nothing seems to give pleasure. Personality temperature runs hot, then cold. No shades of grey.
There is always a reason behind each outburst, something which triggers it: a season, a holiday, an event, a person, a circumstance, a moral stance, a perspective, a memory. These reasons are excuses for abuse.
Cancer: A friend of mine died about 5 years ago, and the world is a sadder place with her passing. She had cancer, and during her course of treatment she mentioned how tired she was of being told to “go to battle against the cancer,” “fight against the cancer,” and on, and on, and on. Why, she wondered, is everything in our world couched in terms of war, battles, fights? Why is there always a need to be victorious, to conquer, to win? What about adapt, accept, modify, negotiate?
I couldn’t agree with her more. In fact, out of all my years of friendship, the things which remain as her legacy to me are love and peace and cooperation.
Aggressive, angry people are to be pitied. They spread disease and contagion of the mind, heart and spirit. Constant complainers who find only the negative are the same. Who benefits from this? Certainly they don’t, but more, those around them become poisoned, oftentimes without realizing what is going on. Anger is infectious, just like a cold, and it makes the rounds. On the surface, it may disappear, but underneath, it can lie dormant in the form of resentment, which can flare into anger at a moment’s notice, with or without justifiable cause. It lurks, ready to attack.
So, how do you get rid of it? How do you get rid of it in your own life? Sure, avoid these kind of people – easy advice – but not necessarily easy to do. You find them at work, in your family. How do you keep from internalizing the poison these people spread? Hey, in today’s vernacular, you have to battle it! And that is just fighting fire with fire. Aggression steps in, the need to win enters.
What about honestly acknowledging the fact that these people exist, are there, and are not going away? How about realizing you cannot change them? How about admitting to a resentment about their toxic effect on your internal landscape? This is called reframing, and this is what can begin an attitudinal shift along with a simple acknowledgement of the reality that is. Not always easy, but certainly a far more peaceful solution than loud confrontations with those people, and a more harmonious way to continue on your life journey.
I cannot change these people, I cannot save these people, nor do I find I have any desire to do so.
Most interestingly, I learn a great deal from these people, about them, and about myself.
Ink, Yarn & Beer 