Scoff Resistant

Many a friend has scoffed at my claim of learning invaluable life lessons from our cats.  Ha!  Had a perfect example, just this afternoon.

Sky (the traumatized kitty who's trashed our house BUT made immense strides, thanks to his courage) was sitting on my lap.  Rennie, the glue of our family & groomer of all he surveys, actually groomed the top of Sky's head for over a minute.  Might not sound like a lot, but it was a major milestone.  

Sky, apparently totally at ease, kept his head down, welcoming the attention.  Way to go, kitty cats!

Then...

Once Sky was all mellow & accepting of Rennie's attentions, that sly feline tried to manuever his way onto my lap,  nudging Sky toward my knees.  Sky, realizing what was afoot, hauled back & let Rennie have it.

Poor Sky.  He'd let himself be all vulnerable, accepted Rennie's grooming in the sweetest, most trusting way, only to see that trust turned back on him.  

I chastised Rennie, who'd been nice in order to gain coveted territory, explaining that Sky had every reason for upset; at the same time I tried to comfort that small little tuxedo, who seemed to have suddenly gotten smaller & returned to his older, hyper cautious way.  

A few minutes later, I looked over at the massive arm chair Mom loved so dearly.  There was Rennie, his head snug up against Alpha, only the very tip of Blackie's ear indicating the wee small kitty's position between the large medium-long haired marmalade & the back cushion.  

Rennie, in easing his way between Sky et moi, was acting in a way totally in keeping with his nature.  One look at the three kitties, all sleeping peacefully in close quarters, showed that.  They seem to welcome megacloseproximity.  Alas, where they feel safe, Sky goes on the alert.  And, truth be told, Rennie did seem to be have a hidden agenda.  Or maybe not.

What do we ever know for sure?   Lesson learned.

G.W., not CitiCorp

All these months, I thought my inner structure resembled the CitiCorp building, an edifice that needed its structure overhauled AFTER it had been completed & occupied for years.  Turns out I'm more the George Washington Bridge, connecting shore to shore.

Unlike CitiCorp, my original plan was sound.  In place of extensive reengineering, removal & replacement, all I've needed is a bit of renovation, restoration, with a bit of strategic rejiggering.  And - surprise, surprise - I'm not reaching upward toward the sun  & stars, but across.  

Seems that the original materials were a lot more suitable than I'd expected, and engineered way better than I'd thought.  

Unexpected.  Would never have realized if I hadn't willingly taken on the BIG task.

Now that the light has dawned, it's time to cut the ribbons, reopen the upper & lower decks, and get folks using my welcoming span.

"... And you will, too."

Caveat:  when I write about my experiences, whatever the context, it's never out of my mind that's all that I'm doing ~ sharing MY experiences, my sense of whatever.  

Every human who's ever lived has remembered certain things, forgotten most.  However well documented, our recollections are intrinsically flawed.  Which explains why our memories are inherently more fiction than fact.  

Am reminded of a story that Mom liked to recollect, something that came up on one of her extended stays Down Under with Mike & Kerry.  As Mom told it, Kerry was often openly critical of her parenting skills.  Being Mom, she kept her silence.  Apparently, though, it finally got to be too much, even for her.

"Kerry," Mom recalled telling my s-i-l, "I swore when I became a parent that I'd never make the same mistakes my Mother made.  And I didn't.  I made my own.  And you will, too."

Have always held onto that bit of maternal wisdom - "And you will, too."  

For every less-than-complimentary memory I have of family members, it's a good bet that they have plenty of me, too.  For every  event that I remember one way with crystal clarity, the chances are they have very different, equally clear memories of the same moment in time.

Being considerably younger than Peter, Mike & Mim, I spent a lot of time observing them, not noticing the things that went well as much as those that seemed to go awry,  swearing I'd never make those mistakes.  

And, for the most part, I haven't.  I've made my own.

Set me reeling

Was set reeling by a sentence from Chief Sealth's (Seattle) 1854 speech, given after the U.S. government demanded his tribe, the Dwamish Indians, hand over  two million more acres in the northwest:

The white man's god cannot love his red children or he would protect them.

That was how I felt about my parents.  How could they love me, when they left me so unprotected?  

Weirdly enough, at least one other sibling had similar issues with feeling left unprotected.  Peter was, even in his late 60s, horrified at how our father didn't storm over to a neighbor's house when one of their kids tossed one of my sibs into a prickly bush.  Even in his late 60s, my brother displayed a deep sense of shock that Dad seemed - at least as far as Peter knew - to do nothing to protect one of his children against a bully.

Not having been involved & knowing - through my Mom & other sibs - that the bully in question seemed to be a downright psychopath, I tend to cut Dad more slack.  First of all, we don't know for absolute sure that he didn't do anything.  And if he didn't, frankly I wouldn't blame him.  It's quite possible that the bully in question might have retaliated, even against an adult.  But the bottom line is that we - neither Peter nor I - don't know what actually happened.

Those feelings of being hurt & experiencing parents who seemed to stay on the sidelines, remaining neutral in the face of what felt like blatant abuse, are all too familiar.  Yet while it's interesting that the quote from Chief Sealth set me reeling, I also know that I also don't know.  

Sound confusing?  Let me simplify.

In looking back over my life, there are very few situations where I can remember either of my parents standing up to my siblings if what my sibs wanted was counter to my own needs. Did they verbally stand up for me, arguing to their best ability my point of view?  I don't doubt they did their best. Still, when it came down to what was done, my sibs' wants were the ones they invariably heeded.

There were a few times when it felt like I was thrown into a metaphysical thorny bush & left on my own to struggle out.  But one thing I know in my very early 60s is that what I don't know is WAY more than I do.  One thing is for sure, because I experienced it myself - two of my sibs could retaliate in the most brutal way possible to Mom  ~ ~  without so much as a single word spoken, they could break her by simply withholding affection, by turning cold.

The white man's god cannot love his red children or he would protect them.

What Chief Sealth didn't grasp was that to the white man, there were no red children.  His thought presupposed that white men saw native people as fellow human beings.  Not in their power to grasp.  

One of the great AH HA! moments in my life was realizing it wasn't that Mom chose to not support me or intentionally turned her back on promises made.   She said it perfectly after one particularly devastating situation  - "I know that I promised I'd do that, but I couldn't."   

Can still hear her say it, because a flood of light came rushing in.  It wasn't that she didn't want to, wasn't that she didn't see the justice of it, didn't see the rightness of it.  She just couldn't do it.

The white man's god cannot love his red children or he would protect them.

That set me reeling.  Yet I know that the bottom line, in my case, comes down to - How do you define love?  

In my world, love is a verb;  in Mom's, it was a noun.  In her world, there was no boundary between someone saying they loved you & it being so;  in mine, the noun has no meaning unless it's backed up with the verb.  

Which leaves me still wondering, as I have for years ~ can parents truly love their children if they don't protect them?  And if it felt like I was being left unprotected, weren't my sibs equally so, with their wants forever met & their needs so often ignored?

So many thoughts triggered by a telling observation from a wise chief....

FINALLY, I don't have the time

Will this moment rank up there with the AH HA! moment when I first realized that we are each on our own path (relieving me of having to keep getting off my own to "help them")?  

Or when it hit me that I was walking into Benade Hall really & truly by myself, without a fantasy sidekick making me feel like I had a place with someone, even if that someone was imaginary?  

Or when, playing with Jada's itty bitty kitties outside their nursery across the street, under Millman's shed, the great light dawned & I knew in my bones that Ian had been a lot like me, that there HAD been someone in my family that shared my loves, it's just that he died when I was seven & he was eleven?  

I think it might.

As I sat down this a.,m. to

check my e-mail, it hit me that 

I don't have the time to read 

Huffington Post or 

Daily Kos or 

Slate 

or Salon 

or check out other-voices websites & blogs.  

Like each of the earlier AH HA! moments mentioned, this searing moment in time arrived unbeckoned yet welcome, greeted with an inner clarity & certainty that immediately recognizes the WOWness of the implications.  

I never requested it, didn't say it every day as an affirmation, didn't write in down on a piece of paper tucked into my wallet (which I don't have) or on the mirror.  The Powers-That-Be just saw the need, a genuine readiness to be something different & act somewhat differently. No dramatic entrance, just a eye-widening, heart-racing knowing.  

Thank you, Universe, for partnering in unexpected ways to help strip away the layers of dross & dreck covering up my internal structure.  You rock - rock on!

Begging the Question

There are three things which, if I did them every day, would change my life.

For decades, I have known this to be true.

And for decades I have never ever done them.

Which begs the question - why have I never followed this path of awareness?

1. Develop a daily meditation practice.
2. Do three sets of three breathing exercises every day.
3. Get in at least 40 minutes of walking every day - 10 minutes warm up, 20 minutes brisk walking, 10 minutes wind down,

Quality Time

Certain qualities hallmark people for above-average success in life.  One quality I admire immensely in both Dave & Candy is their ability to see what's before them to be done, then apply themselves to attending to it (and, conversely, taking care to NOT get swept into doing things that distract their attention & dilute their efforts).  Their minutes, days, weeks, months & years add up to quality time.

Seeing the wise goals & best next steps each morning, avoiding the many things eager to crowd in & distract me throughout the day from taking best next steps - those are core characteristic worth developing.  If I choose.  It's one or the other.  No middle ground.  Do I care enough to act, or only to prattle?  

What I can't do is say I care, then do nothing.  That is profanation.  Sound a bit over the top?  Not really.  Humans just get so comfortable with shafting themselves on a daily basis, that calling that tendency to see what needs attention, to say we will give it, then not, by it's true name seems overkill.

It's not.  Imagine every one of us waking up, seeing what is before us to be done, then doing it.  Our world would WORK.  Where does that perverse drive to derail come from?  Our infernal inclinations.  

Wake up, see what's in front of me, discern what warrants my attention & energies, and (just as important) what doesn't.  Do the one, distance myself from the other.  No big fa-de-ra, just clear vision & wisely focused action.

Laughing Matter

Looking over the recent postings, have to chortle over how... calm I seem to come across.  

While it's truth that the more dicey a situation is, the more grounded I seem to feel (yes, even as a kid), those moments were probably .000009 of my life experience. The other times were something quite different.  Calm would not be a word I'd ever apply to them.

I often wonder what John thought a month after we married.  It never dawned on me, the false image he'd gotten of my family & our interpersonal mash-ups.  John wasn't privy to the wheeling & dealing that went on leading up to our engagement announcement, with one person threatening to boycott the party if things weren't done in the manner HE saw best.  John  didn't know the fractious history between family members, because from the moment we first connected to our wedding day was about as ideal a time as anyone could imagine.  

And then the wedding was over & everyone went back to their usual selves.  

For years, as I chronically fell into periods of self-doubt, criticism & even loathing, John felt helpless at his inability to turn things around.  "Why isn't MY love enough?" was his frequent plea.  He didn't say what he could have - because you're never going to get theirs.  He didn't understand - the entire premise of my life was to be the person who made our family possible.

And I didn't understand that the reason was because I was the only one who saw us - all of us, including me - as a family.  

Calm is the last word I'd use to describe how I was from age 24 to my mid 50s.  More like a basket case, unable to fit in where it seemed to matter most, unable to fit in other places because of my expectation that people wouldn't like me (except John, thank goodness - not sure how it was okay for him to love me). 

Can't imagine how I came across to others - all merry & bright on meeting, which quickly flipped into a dour, dark side.  My pessimistic, self-negating nurture clashing with my genuinely hopeful, upbeat nature.  Can recall people actually backing away in confusion.  I was a mess.  

It wasn't until John that I learned healthy ways to express distress. That was an eye opener - with John, it was okay to be stressed out & distraught; not for the sake of acting up, but for figuring out what was wrong & resolving it.  

Will always remember the first time I wigged out on him & he asked, "What is the problem?" Stopped in my tracks, jaw dropped, disbelieving.  Huh?  He repeated, "What is the problem?" 

In all my 37+ years, no one had ever asked me that.  My family had no concept of identifying a problem in order to address & resolve it.  But John did.  I spilled out to him what he'd said that had reduced me to emotional rubble.  

He looked at me, a light dawning.  "Oh," he said.  "You heard me say....  No wonder you were upset.  What I meant by what I said was...."

Oh, my gosh. He repeated back to me what I'd heard, acknowledged that was what I'd heard, then went on to let me know that it was NOT what he'd meant to convey, and let me know what that was. Wow...  I could not believe how blessed I was to be married to such a man.

Twenty-four years later, I feel the same way.  

It could not have been easy for him.  In my experience, it was NOT okay to identify a problem with the goal of resolving it.  Not our family way.  My sister-in-law was spot on when she'd bitterly complain that Lockharts preferred to bury their heads in the sand.  I was the exception, always alarmingly ready to look a difficult situation in the eye.  And get shut down every time.  

Twenty-four years later, can still feel the lightness of being that came upon me when it dawned on me that John had no such qualms about looking problems straight on, that he saw them as no more than a natural part of life, to be reckoned with & moved past.

I can't imagine all those years, after we were married & while Mom was still alive, when I fell into increasingly dark moods & desperation.  It was no laughing matter, that's for sure.  On the one hand, I had John's healthy approach; the other, Mom's.  How blessed I was that John rose to the occasion, quietly, without fanfare, providing the emotional ballast I so desperately needed.

Yes, the first 15+ years of our marriage were far from calm.  And making serious headway wasn't really possible until after Mom was reunited with her O Best Beloved, for more reasons than I'm sure I'll ever understand.  John had to deal with a wife who emotionally disintegrated on a regular basis.  

John was my rock, providing the kind, caring & fair-minded qualities I needed more than anything else.  Above all, he modeled health.  And he never, not once, criticized my siblings or Mom (with the sole exception of a snarky comment to me about my s-i-l's hair color).  That mattered immensely to me.

So, I find it pretty laughable, reading some of my earlier posts & seeing how balanced I seemed.  HA!  But what is true is that I always, from age 24, believed that balance was possible.  That and an ability to delve deeply & come back up safely were my highest aspirations.  

Laughing matter?  No.  

Knowing the ultimate goal was as simple as joy?  Yes.

Personal Petri Dish

If I’d been born into a so-called “typical” family, my life would have included probably at least one sibling or parent with whom I felt a sense of reciprocal connection.  My family was far from typical & there wasn’t a single person with whom I had a reciprocal sense of connection.  What I had was the equivalent of a telephone with a slashed cord – there could be all the desire in the world for connection on my end, but it wasn’t going to happen.  Not when I was little, not when I was a teen or an adult or now, when I am at the far end of middle age. 

Most people think of that as terribly sad.  It is what it is. 

Around six years ago, Gail Cooper introduced me to Gary Chapman’s concept of the five languages of love.  A blazing light dawned as she described them to me.  Immediately realized that my mom, my sister & myself has a different language of love – Mom gave words of affirmation, Mim seems most comfortable giving things, while I am acts of service.   On the receiving end, Mom also longed for words of affirmation, Mim – truth be told I don’t know how my sister best receives love, while for me it’s definitely quality time with people. 

It drove me batty how Mim & Peter could treat Mom like dirt, but all they had to say was “I love you” and all was well.  Poor woman.  She was okay with that, while she never, not to her dying day, could figure out why it drove me wild when she’d do something totally against my best interests (and usually against hers too), then think saying, “I love you” would make it okay.  That made NO sense to me.  It did to her. 

Mim was the most generous sister imaginable, when she wanted to be.  But what I longed for then & now was her time.  A few years ago, I came across letters Mim wrote to Mom during the brief period she attended the University of Houston, when I was in high school.  She mentioned making the time to watch a TV. show she knew I liked, so that we would have something to talk about.   Sheez.  There she was, taking time from her studies to keep up to date with a TV. show so that she’d have some connection with her little sis, while back home I longed for her return, to engage with her fascinating intellect, which even as a kid I revered as light years beyond mine. 

If I had been born into the typical American family (which probably doesn’t exist), I would never have experienced spectacularly complex family dynamics that defied belief.  I would never have realized you can’t generalize about families, that even the best of them are challenged.  I would never have understood that people can experience the exact same thing in radically different ways.  That being different doesn’t make you or them wrong.  That just because something is an issue for you doesn’t mean it’s going to be an issue for anyone else – get over it.  

Our family serves as our personal petri dish, demonstrating our personal & familial chemical interactions.  We can make it our first, greatest learning lab.  Don't grouse or grumble about family fracas - take notes!

First Inklings

The first inkling I had that my way of looking at things was different from my siblings happened when I was eight. 

My oldest brother & I  - a whopping 14 years between us – had gone out to buy a tree on Christmas Eve.  We bought it so late because the lumberyard where Dad had been a v.p. burned down the year before.  Instead of working for someone else, Dad decided to start his own tiny lumber & millwork shop.  All my parents’ money was tied up in that small but mighty dream, hence, buying a tree at 5:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve.

My oldest brother was none too happy about having to a) embarrass himself by buying a last-gasp tree  and  b) having to lug his little sister around with him in the bargain.

We found a tree – not perfect, but the perfect price - got it into the flatbed of the truck & headed home.  Well, almost home.

There was one stop my brother wanted to make.  

We drove down the long drive to his best friend’s house, where the entire family – including older brothers & sisters & their families – had gathered.  

My guess is that there was nothing my brother wanted more than to be snug in that cozy circle of family, family that he could relate to, not the one down in the little house that was a converted chicken coop, atop a hill without any driveway or even direct access to the road, with a coal furnace that needed to be tended to at least once during the night & even then only heated 4/5 of  the house.  

As we drove up to the big house, all its lights blazing, and he parked the car right outside the small door, not the main one, he explained to me that he was going in to say “Merry Christmas” and that I was to wait in the car until he came back out.

With that, he opened his door, got out, went up the stone step to the small door, opened it to a brightly-lit hallway, and closed it behind him.  Leaving me in the cab of the truck, in the dark, in the cold, alone.

Okay, I thought to myself.  Now what.  I wasn’t afraid, even though it was dark & I was stuck by myself in the cab of a truck in a familiar-but-it-didn’t-feel-that-way driveway.  I tried amusing myself, but it is pretty hard to do when there’s no radio in the car & even if I’d thought to bring a book, it would have been too dark to read.  I remember regretting not wearing gloves.  I tried keeping cold as I waited.  And waited.  And waited.

Now, imagine that you are a 22 year old guy, in the heart of a family you dearly would love to call your own, on Christmas Eve.  Not a one of them has a clue that your little sister is waiting out in their driveway in the cab of a red VW pick-up, her only company a Christmas tree in the back, so of course everyone – all dressed up for a holiday family party - is making a fuss over you & urging you to stay.   Time speeds by for you.

For your little sister, out in the increasing seriously cold cab, it drags by. 

My guess is that, if the roles had been reversed, my older brother might have stayed put until I came out.  Maybe he would have felt embarrassed to admit to a soul that an older sibling had left him on his own for however long or short a time. 

I had no such qualms.  I was cold.  And I had waited quite long enough, thank you. 

To this day, I remember that someone who worked there answered my knock on that small door, remember the look of shocked surprise on his face as I inquired, “Is Peter Lockhart still here?”  As he whipped me into the narrow hallway, two women came out of what I guessed was the kitchen – “You poor little thing, you look half frozen,” they said, rubbing my hands.  They sent the fellow to quietly get my brother’s best friend. 

I can still see the merriment in his eyes when he spotted me.  Today, at 61, I know that he knew there was going to be the devil for my brother to pay for leaving me out in the car, and he was looking forward to it.  Back then, I had no idea what was to come.  (Guys can be so mean to each other, even best friends.)  

He thanked the ladies for warming me up, took my hand, bent over to reassure me that all was well, and walked me through a long entry way with windows on both sides that lead to the HIGH ceiling living room with a vast fireplace, a room well-suited for the manor house it was in. 

“Look what I found!” he announced as we descended the steps into the great room.  

His mother, the one person I fully recognized, sat near the fire.  I was aware of being surrounded by a lot of older people (I don’t remember any children, certainly none of my schoolmates), as she beckoned me over.  She put her arm around me, drew me close, and said, with a piercing look & steel in her voice, “Peter, what were you thinking leaving this poor child out in the dark & cold all by herself?”

In that moment, my eyes met my brother’s & even I, at age eight, had no question what was going through his head.  And, I am proud to say, I didn’t care.  I was inside & warm & that was all I cared about.  Yes, it was nice to be fussed over by lots of older people who seemed to think I was the cutest thing ever, but it was being out of the cold that mattered.

I didn’t intend to totally & completely mortify my brother, to shame him in the eyes of the very people who mattered to him most in the world.  But he should have realized that I was not my older sister, was not someone who would wait & maybe even take an itsy bit of pleasure in my discomfort.

Neither of us spoke on the drive home.  Neither of us told anyone.  Mom only heard about it when his best friend’s mother spilled the beans, thinking our family already knew.  And he had to go through the embarrassment of it all over again.

Even now, I can recall the thoughts that ran through my head as I walked from the narrow hallway to the grand living room.  Looking around, soaking it all in, I could understand why my brother wanted to be there – it was the best sort of place to celebrate Christmas.  And then the people seemed so nice, so welcoming – who wouldn’t want to spend as much time as possible with them.  

Even at the remarkably young age of eight, a part of me felt sad for him, that he had to go home with me & with that less than perfect but perfectly affordable Christmas tree.  

Even at the remarkably young age of eight, part of me understood him better than he’d ever begin to understand me.  

It was the first inkling I had that we might be related by blood, but that might be the only thing we shared in common. 

TIPPING point

Having both the idea for a monthly “younger”-made & served dinner for our local retirement community AND the idea for a monthly “dessert & Martinelli's” shot down - - by the retiremeng community!!  - - has proved a personal tipping point. 

The reasons given were financial (having that one free night might eat into the people making reservations for either or both of the $ catered weekly dinners) & practical (no one would care about having dessert after their dinner;  clean up was too much hassle). And I am sure that those really & truly are their objections.  Still....

They couldn’t manage one (1) home-cooked, lovingly served meal, a monthly visible “thank you” from younger generations to olders who are role models, mentors & beloved relatives?  No one would like a lovely bit of dessert with a champagne flute filled with chilled sparkling cider? 

My guess is that what we have here is a communication problem, between different cultures.  

Up until this past Sunday, I would have valiantly tried to find ways to make both events work for everyone, from finding underwriting against any potential losses to having volunteers at the ready to leave the place spic & span. 

But this situation was my tipping point, my AH HA! realization that when the core problem could involve conflicting cultures, butting heads is a waste of time & energy.  That battle is lost before it’s begun.

Learned that during my years in Public Relations at Prudential Healthcare. 

It was interesting, coming to work at the traditional employee health benefits provider after several highly successful years at PruCare HMO PA/NJ (US Healthcare/USHC).  Strange, the people I worked with struggled to get their minds around the concept of managed care – it was foreign to them.  A totally different culture from the point-of-service benefits that had been the gold standard for fifty years. 

How ironic that it was PRUDENTIAL that gave USHC the space & time to grow into a competitor.  Due to the considerable savings they offered, their managed health care plans were offered to Prudential business unit employees in  PA & NJ.  

In gaining short-term benefits, Prudential sowed the seeds of its long-term employee benefits doom.  But there was no telling them that.  By the time it finally decided to go head-to-head with USHC, it was too late. 

The story was that Leonard Abramson approached a Prudential Healthcare/Central (my region) vp relatively early in USHC’s success with the offer to sell his company to PHCS, to everyone’s benefit.  The story is the vp rebuffed him with, “Buy you?  We will bury you.” 

I don’t know how much the vp made after Prudential Healthcare was sold to AETNA, but when the same company bought USHC, Len Abramson made about $1 billion on the deal. 

It stuns me, how blessed I was to have worked at USHC when I did, when it was a great success but still relatively small, all in one building.  What a blessing it was to work closely with his two oldest daughters (his youngest was still in school) and to know Len, if only as someone who’d heard about my work & wanted to meet me.  What a blessing to work so closely with both the PA & the NJ Medical Director VPs (capital Vice President is light years from lower case), to see the ins & outs & round abouts of managed care.  To have provider offices begging me not to hightail it to be part of PHCS/Central's fledgling Public Relations team, frantic because “you’re the only one who can explain how things work.”

And I was able to do THAT because of my five years teaching at Bryn Athyn Elementary & because of my classes at what is now Bryn Athyn College.  My background was in breaking down challenging information into portions that a middle schooler could understand & - ideally – connect to personally. 

Sheez – that’s my LONG way of saying that while I understood how managed health care worked, what its advantages were to both employers & covered employees, and its potential pitfalls, the folks at Prudential Healthcare were not only clueless, they were happy to be so.  After all, they were Prudential, and that was everything. 

Until  it  wasn’t.

The reason Prudential Healthcare could never come up with a competitive product is that the company was shackled to a culture that had become outdated.  Oh, they brought in new people, people with experience at managed health care companies, people who had started health maintenance organizations from the ground floor up.  New blood, fresh ideas which we were promised would strip down the old culture & rebuild a fresher, more vibrant, successful one. 

And that was – over a quarter century ago – when I learned a great truth that has stayed with me ever since:  when you bring in someone with a fresh perspective to transform an entrenched culture, the culture will change her, not vice versa.

My local retirement community.  My local elementary school. Each of the Academy schools.  The Academy, as an organization.  The church, as in the local parish.  The Church as an organization, located in my hometown.  The cathedral.   All of them as employers & as employees.  Individual families.  Family groups.  Circles of friends.  Every single one of them has one or more attached cultures. 

It astonishes me to realize how deeply interested I’ve been in the power of culture over my life, even when I didn’t put a name on it.  When the vp dismissed Len Abramson’s savvy offer, I knew – peep squeak that I was – it revealed PHCS as a dinosaur, a doomed culture headed to extinction.  It means something to me now realizing that it meant something to me then. 

What flipped the switch after all these years of interest & quietly noticing connections is how much I see the power of culture affecting families – beginning with my own – in dealing with aging parents. 

Yes, this was a long rambly introduction to simply saying that everything that came before had tipped over into one great HUGE interest in learning more about how the challenges of aging affect & are affected by the power of family culture.  

Odd Duck

It's sad but true that more people than I care to think about don't give two pins who is left behind, or if someone falls down.  Especially in business.  Seems a lot of folks think that approaching business any other way will mark you for failure. 

Well, I never acted that way in business.  Yes, it did mark me as a bit of an odd duck in Corporate America, but what the heck - no matter what I did, folks always seemed to find me a bit off-kilter, so better be true to my values & beliefs than come across as fake.

Lots of people say you'll never come out ahead if you stop to help out those folks left behind or lend an uplifting hand to someone who's taken a tumble.  

I've found the opposite to be true.  

My success at US Healthcare was based 4-square on finding effective ways to help people find just solutions to problems, even when that meant going out on a limb for clients or for the company.  At Prudential, I finally became a certifiable success - after years of mediocrity - when I decided to put the company's best interests ahead of my own.  And I was named Employee of the Year at BISYS Financial Services due to going the extra mile for clients, even when it meant taking way more time on the phone than the norm - colleagues warned me I'd get bad reviews if I didn't maintain a more "ideal" standard.    


At age 61, I'm proud to be an odd duck, a mixture of Don Quixote & Tigger, with a dash of Paula Deen.  C'est moi.  Guess I've got a bit of Bay Watch babe in me, too, since I could never leave someone floundering in life's tricky undertows, not if I could help.  

The importance of sticking around to help others, was brought  home to me at a very tender age.

When I was around eight or nine years old, my sister & I slept out in a tent in our backyard throughout the summer.  Although I didn't enjoy it like Mim did, I was not going to look like a wimp to my adored big sister.

One dark night, as we lay there in the tent, talking, I felt a cold nose press against the bottom of my bare foot.  I screamed in shock, then fear as something large seemed to thump onto my leg.  

Clawing my way toward the front flap, I can still hear my sister saying, as she rushed past me, "Every man for himself."

Even in the midst of my terror, even at age eight or nine, her words made a huge impression on me.  I knew, even at age eight or nine, that I might have rushed out of the tent, but I would never, not in a million years, have made such a comment.  And I actually doubt that I would have left without making sure the other person was okay.  

Never, ever have I been the sort of person who could say, "Everyone for herself" as I fled a scene where I was needed.  That's not tooting my own horn - it's involuntary, bred in my bones as much as the color of my eyes.  Yes, that might make me an odd duck.  You know what?  I wouldn't have it any other way!

"This to will pass." Sufi

That is so.  The only question for any of us is, "What have we learned from it?"

People don't stop being bullies...

A quote from the great Patti Digh - "People don't stop being bullies when they grow  up.  They just dress differently."  

Ready to be Ready

That totally captures Dave & Candy and every other really successful person I've known - they are ready to be ready.  Ready to see whatever opportunity is at hand that fits them, that is worth their energy, their time, their financial investment.  Ready to see what's right in front of them that  will deepen their essential selves - and to see what won't.  Ready to turn away from distractions, however enticing, and when to jump right in.

Readiness to be ready.  It's not something learned, but a state of mind.  A willingness to be open in a ready state, being open, being welcoming.  But that is such an infinitely teensy sense of what I mean.  True readiness is inexpressable.  

In what ways am I ready to be ready?  

Breast or Butterfly?

The older I get, the greater my delight that there is more than one stroke in swimming, that we each have our own distinctive style of keeping afloat.  

Mom favored the breast stroke.  Me, I like swimming underwater.  Dad was an sidestroke guy.  Whichever stroke we used, it propelled us forward.  (My guess is that Mim prefers the backstroke, which looks backward but still propels forward.)

Is there a stroke designed to take swimmers away from their intended destinations?  Not possible.  

So, whatever your stroke - swim on!

Once More Into The Breach

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead."  Henry V,  Wm. Shakespeare

Once more, Emily Jane did it - her Christmas present to me was, again, the just-right book to read at just this moment.  (I've come to anticipate her Christmas present with the same sense of gee-whiz excitement as I once regarded the extra-large box  I knew contained a doll - she's been so freakishly on the mark.)  This year, it was Hand Wash Cold - care instructions for an ordinary life.  It's the book I try  to read after going to bed, try to get in a few pages before Sky makes his presence known, nestling down on my chest, at which point I close the book & turn off the light.  

It's been a good way to read this particular book, which is written in a relaxed style but which I've enjoyed experiencing in small bites instead of long sessions.  Never fails to amaze me how much the few paragraphs I manage to get in resound with a recent experience.

Last night, the paragraph that shouted out to me concerns her thoughts on realizing she did NOT want to end a misery by ending her life...  Later, I could have said this was the moment I save my own life.  At the time, it felt more like I'd outed myself from a high-stakes game of masquerade.  I didn't want to die.  I didn't want to play sad anymore.  I wanted to live live live live live.  Who was I no longer fooling?  ~  The answer was, I was no longer fooling myself.  

That's as far as I got before the soft hum of Sky's purring, the warmth of his fur (and not being able to turn the pages) had me setting aside the book & turning off the light.  And they were just the right words to send me tumbling into sleep.

My answer to the question in my previous posting, the question about what gives me a sense of freedom was not what I would have expected.  It came from nowhere, from a place beyond my conscious, which I all too often have disguised into something different from what's real.  But what IS real?  Ah, my question for 37 years.  Never, not in a million zillion years, would I have guessed that my reality is my greatest sense of freedom comes from having an awareness of the well planned, the structured, the - horrors! - predictable.  Avante garde moi?  Predictable??  

Oh, yes, please!  

Answering the question about what liberates outed me from my own high-stakes game of masquerade.  Since I've gotten no further than the end of page 22, I don't know what the author's next thought is, but mine is an echo of I don't want to die.  I don't want to play sad anymore.  

For going on 37 years, my primary goal in life has been to find what is real for me. The image I've had for those 37 years - an image that came to me sitting at the cozy table in Susie & Dorothy's apartment, a cup of hot tea in front of me & priceless friendship all around me - was of a swan skimming along the surface of a pond, but longing to dive dive dive all the way to the bottom, to the very floor of the pond, then back up again again.  Pretty cool imagery & spot on in its meaning to me, although I could never describe it in words.  But I did draw it.

For those 37 years, it's been one striving for new awareness, for fresh perspective after another.  It's been a battle at times.  And it's felt like I get through one struggle only to find another awaiting me.  Constant "once more into the breach" moments.  

Now, it turns out that what liberates me - what's always liberated me - is the well planned, the structured, the predictable.  Didn't see that coming.  A simple question and relatively brief (for me) answer & I was outed from a lifelong masquerade of being a quirky person thriving on the spontaneous, the unprompted & unplanned.  A simple question answered & I am no longer fooling myself.  

Rats!

I have only myself to "blame" for these new battles (because they will be plural) to be fought & won.  I'm the one who talked about needing to put internal structures in place.  But come on - well planned, structured, predictable?  Predictable???  Wasn't I the one who'd rather die than be predictable?  

Oh, wait - I realized I don't want to die.  

So, once more into the breach, dear friends, as I sally forth, girded with armor forged over almost 4 decades, to forge a life with internal structures, structures providing the very framework for my 3rd act, even if it takes leaving all the bodies of my former selves strewed in front of the battlements of my (gasp!) goal.  

Freedom's Just Another Word...

What IS freedom to me?  When do I feel my most completely liberated?

Stranger, perhaps, but true, I feel my most liberated when I am successfully following a healthy pattern, when I set out to do something and do it, do it well, do it in a timely fashion, and it's something that matters.  I haven't felt that way very often, but it is what delivers my deepest sense of freedom.  Freedom, for me,  is found within wise constructs; Robert Frost was spot on - good fences make good neighbors.  True for my real life neighbors & true for the folks dancing around in my head.  

What does that mean for me, that freedom for me is best within bordered spaces?