Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
Albert Einstein
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By Jill MacGregor
When I walk outside, dinosaurs don’t chase me. I don’t see danger at every turn. My fight or flight response rarely if ever has good cause to kick in.
Except when I am saving everyone’s life in my head. I do it a lot.
You’re welcome. Just doing my job.
What could I possibly be talking about? It’s like this. In my head, on a very regular basis, I have smack down every home invader, scare the shit out of every mugger and protected myself and everyone I love from danger.
It’s sort of a volunteer position.
Until recently, I thought it was one of those things we all did—like talking to yourself or replaying the day’s events until they played more favorabley.
Is this wasted energy or preparation? Only time will tell because I do inadvertently store all my scenarios away. Not for review but for just in case. Card catalog of defensive maneuvers and crushing comebacks… complete with bat shit crazy facial expressions and gestures so every fictional attacker understands that I have nothing to lose, I’ve been waiting for trouble…for the myriad of dangerous situations in which I find myself…alright, ,in my head.
I am not a negative person. I am slightly embarrassed to admit that I am an optimist which makes me feel like Pollyanna, bonnet tied under my chin, understanding that my fall from the tree will bring the town together.
But, honestly, we live in a world full of miracles. Children unburied in Haiti. Peace when everything points to potential chaos. Saying yes instead of saying no.
We created this phrase: near miss. It describes all the good things that rationally shouldn’t have happened but did.
Maybe that’s just our version of a miracle.
In fact, we’ve created an entire lexicon all so we don’t have to say miracles. I think it might embarrass us or feel too Old Testament…
Narrow escape. Incredulous. Unexpected. Lucky Duck. To be in awe of. And then, out of nowhere. When I least expected it.
All miracles.
Love. Friendship. Forgiveness. Cured (always past tense). Belief.
All of those positive things that happen in a way we can’t quite explain…miracles. Doesn’t always have to involve Olympic hockey or rising from the dead to be miraculous.
I could leave my crime fighting behind me. The world may not need me to take care of it after all.
`
by Jill MacGregor
There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
Anais Nin
Tested.
Steeled.
Trial by fire.
Sometimes what feels really bad is really good for us. In a there’s no other way to get this information kind of way.
We’ve all had those moments, when we’re living our lives, minding our own business and things are going fine. Then, in what feels like out of the blue, everything changes, situations become difficult and you’re knee deep in something thorny, possibly tragic and definitely something new…not good new.
Suddenly, something is going to stop being easy. Something’s going to stop being comfortable. And sometimes, something that we thought was perfect and dear may be ending.
All these rough spots that life nudges us toward with sharp, pointy elbows, the moments of great change and sometimes great pain, coincidently happen to be pockets of intense personal growth of the *whether you want to or not* variety.
I have a tendency to whisper “thank you” under my breath, understanding that this situation I’m about to be shoved into is going to change me at the core whether I want to be changed or not. And while it changes me, it also prepares me to deal with other challenges. Thank you, I whisper, for change and all of its many guises.
Thank you, for the job that ended…because I am doing so many more interesting things with my time and mind. Things I wouldn’t have discovered and truly embraced otherwise.
Thank you for the relationships that have changed or ended even though at the moment it felt like a loss. They’ve allowed other relationships to rise to the surface and become even more important to me.
Thank you for distance that makes me miss some of the most important people in my life. It makes me never waste a moment with them.
Thank you for all of the times I only had a vague notion of what I wanted my life to be—all the times when I felt like I was just a big aggregate of dissimilar situations, unconnected events, a pile of strings. Those moments taught me patience (still learning) and gave me an eye to spot what’s valuable…not by the shine, but by the strength.
Although my first reaction to change may be pain, fear, sadness or discomfort, that is merely a response to a symptom of what I’m experiencing, not the end product of change. These symptoms are just the deep stretch to warm up my emotional muscles. And sometimes that initial stretch doesn’t feel very good at all. I think I’ve pulled something…
Thank you, I whisper, for all the times I thought I couldn’t. There’s nothing like being half way up the proverbial mountain and feeling like you have no strength to continue only to discover you have just enough in you for one more step–and one more step and one more step after that.
Thank goodness for that.
The most important thing to remember is this: To be ready at any moment to give up what you are for what you might become.
W.E.B. Du Bois
You may want to read Don’t Make Me *Lucky Bastard* You
Haiti.
Let’s get on it.
NOW.
Let’s make a difference and help. Here’s are some options and they are all easy.
From Your Cell:
Text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to @RedCross relief efforts in Haiti OR
Text “Yele” to 501501 to donate $5 to the Yele Haiti Earthquake Fund (Yele.org)
Here are a list of other organizations who are helping with relief to Haiti that you can donate to.
Remember, you really are one lucky bastard. Now go do something for someone who isn’t.
If you are still sitting there, please read this.
Thanks.
by Jill MacGregor
I’m finding that I like to designate a new year *The Year of Fill InThe Blank* before I get too far into it. Sort of give it a theme, like a ride at Disneyland. It keeps me focused, as if someone’s posted a sign I can always glance up at in case I’ve forgotten what I need to be doing next.
This has been such an interesting last year and a very different year than I’ve had in a long time. I felt myself ramping during 2009. Making changes and having changes made all around me that put me in a unique position to (voraciously) need to know the inner workings of things around me in a new way. NEED TO KNOW like a starving person. I’m not sure why what brought this on. Therefore, 2009 was appointed The Year of Learning.
I felt this overwhelming need to be smarter in 2009.
Don’t get excited– I still round up on fractions (learned that from baking) and my high school friend, Anne, will make a very sad face while explaining my difficulties with Algebra…blah…
In 2009, I caught a sense of the speed the world was moving at, how it was picking up speed everyday and I didn’t find it scary. I found it thrilling. I understood in my bones that there was more I needed to know so that I could keep up with all this spinning.
Year of Learning.
So, what is this year supposed to be? It seems really important to label it…like the Chinese do. Some ideas:
Year of the Whisker
Year of Actually Reading a Book Instead of Listening to It
Year of Stop Growing Your Hair Out Already, Crystal Gayle
Year of the Cat Starring at Me Endlessly Like She’s About To Share An Uncomfortable Secret (like she’s really a very fat guinea pig—love her)
Lovely choices, and annoying accurate, but possibly not what I’m looking for.
When I think about what the focus of this year should be, I want to see myself at the end of it, on December 31st, breathing a contented sign and feeling like my life is so much better than when the year started. That was how it felt this Dec 31st and I liked it. Maybe this coming year should be:
The Year of Being Healthy
The Year of Working for the Man (I am getting the itch to 9 to 5 it)
The Year of Getting My Nerd On and Learning a Developer’s Language
The Year of Finishing That Book
The Year of Getting Published…or is that simply being self-published?
Honestly, The Year of Learning will continue, because once you start a practice like that it’s difficult to stop. The monster must be fed.
And if the only one holding me back is me—I guess the question is really how big can I make this year. How can I make enormity look small?
Oh my…I have to sit down.
Maybe this could be The Year of Risk.
Let me take a moment and step back. Sometimes when I ask myself big questions like this or when I lay my little head on the pillow, I find myself back in Hong Kong, for some strange reason. It’s not because I lived there for an extended period of time or even had a significant experience there. I did go there last year for business and pleasure and certainly enjoyed my trip…but didn’t feel a big urge to return to Hong Kong.
So why do very palpable memories come flooding back? I smell the streets, I feel the heat, I know what to expect around the corner where my mind’s eye has taken me…
Maybe it’s because I was a stranger there. I was foreign.
And I got lost a lot.
I really love those two things—being foreign and getting lost in a strange land. It turns you on your head and forces you outside your comfort zone. I am very comfortable outside of my comfort zone…well, maybe outside of someone’s comfort zone. It seems like there’s something about not understanding that makes you realize that you are on the verge of understanding something really big.
Perhaps I should call this The Year of Being on the Verge of Understanding Something Really Big.
That could do with some editing.
While I ponder my year, I’d love to hear what you think the focus of your year is going to be. Shout it out!
by Jill MacGregor
We all have hopes and dreams—goals we’re working towards—projects we’re passionate about. These things light our fire, fuel us and often times become a part of our identity.
I just want to check—when you think of yourself working on the projects you’re most passionate about, do you feel like you’re a champion? Are you giving yourself the credit you deserve for the progress you’ve made?
Do you give yourself room to win?
Because, I tell you, it has to start with you. You shoot the gun, you run the race and you call the finish. One day there’s going to be a jackass in front of you telling you that they don’t get it, they don’t like it, they don’t understand why you’re bothering or will offer you the flimsy most deficient of praises for your efforts.
(You’re picturing that person’s face, aren’t you? Yea, me too.)
Don’t let them win.
There is one person who can keep the fires burning and that person is you. It may feel exhausting sometimes but it’s good to know who’s in charge of making your dreams a reality (that’s you). No one is going to do it for you. Stop waiting for someone else to do the heavy lifting. Its all you, my friend. You are the director, the lead and the stage hand. If you assign any of these roles to other people, what are you going to end up with? (asked the control freak.)
People love you, people want to see you succeed but you are the only person so closely tied to the outcome of making your dreams come true. That will never be as important to others as it will be to you—no matter how much they love you.
No one’s going to make your dream happen for you.
So let’s play a little game with my theatre analogy and see how you’re progressing. In my mind, champions play all these roles.
You, as the director
You call the shots. A good director pushes because he sees the future performance; he knows what the end product needs to look like. A good director is always looking for a way to make it better. And you’re a good director because you can read the room; you understand what people need before they do. You might think this all sounds like clever manipulation but I call it close observation, attention to what is not said just as much as to what is said. Leading the action. Stating what you want until you get it. Being appreciative when you do get it or even something better than you’d expected.
Are you doing that? Who would possibly do that for you—and if anyone is, why are you letting them? This production is yours.
You, as the stage hand
So many details keep the machine running. So many people rely on you moving invisibly behind the stage. Everything has to be in its place and hit its own mark for the production to be believable and hold the audience’s attention. But every rehearsal has prepared you for this performance—as you’ve developed the muscle memory to multi-task you way through most anything. And become agile enough to make due when something isn’t exactly in place.
You are the glue that keeps everything together.
You, as the lead
Insecure, with a definite need for constant praise, you are at your best and shiniest, when you feel the pressure may crack you. You’re quite certain that this is the one time they are all going to finally discover that you are a big fake, a giant imposter and that all previous good fortune was happenstance. Just dumb luck. Right place, right time.
But then you’re on the stage and all that insecurity drops away because you are the presence. You breathe life into all you do. Do you know why? Because all your former roles have prepared you for this moment even if deep down in the clutch of your gut your scared and unsure if you can do it. But ego and desire drove you up on this stage, that and something you can’t quite name, something like passion but even bigger, so chest out. Chin up and find your light. You know you could never stop even if you wanted to.
You are what people came to see.
That may sound like a lot of work for one person but the production is you and no one’s going to care for it with the same level of dedication as you will.
YOU.
Sure, we all need help from time to time. But it’s the moments when we’ve given our power away, when we’ve started to coast—those are the moments when we realize our dream is becoming a speck in the distance because we are moving away from it.
What makes people champions? When the taxonomy is our own, the definitions are our own why would we allow others opinions to gauge if we’ve been successful?
You could say someone is a champion when they achieve their dreams. But there’s a whole lot that goes on until you reach that moment. So I say a champion is someone who doesn’t give up, doesn’t sit back and let someone drive and stays in the game even when it feels like their passion has become its own reward.
Champions rarely look neat and clean. They often look slightly bruised, bloody and battle worn with a big smile on their face, arms raised and yelling, “Yes!”.
By Jill MacGregor
I started this blog just a few months ago on September 11th, as a birthday present to myself. I didn’t know exactly what to expect as I began. It’s been a thrill for me.
Tracks in the snow. You. You there. I know you’re out there…quietly tiptoeing around in the dark and leaving behind your analytics. I see the trail you leave. I so love to hear your shouts from the etherworld. Overwhelming me with your opinions, hopes, rants.
I want to thank you for reading. I don’t think I can tell you how much it means to me that you take time out of your day to do so.
That little thing you do is so meaningful to me.
Thank you.
My personal goal was to hit 2,500 unique visitors this year and I hit 2,501.
Thank you again.
Here are your favorite posts in order. You picked all my favorites. Hope you enjoy.
Since I am embracing “don’t ask, don’t get” this year in a brand new way, I’d like to ask two more things of you. If you haven’t subscribed, it would mean a lot to me if you would. And if there’s a post that speaks to you, please share it with a friend.
Thanks in advance.
Your Faves From 2009
10 Life Changing Lessons I Learned From Painting…… I been very surprised over the years by what painting has taught me about life—and I don’t mean about appreciating form and color. Painting is the one thing I can’t multi-task my way through.
What Makes People Mean……..I don’t know what made me think of this story today but I want to share it with you. At a young age, it taught me that things and people are not always as they seem.
When People Leave …….We all have a team–a team being that group of people, family and friends, that you rely on in good times and bad. They are the people you reach for first.
Romper Bomper Stomper Boo………Do you remember the first time you realized your sweet perception of reality was not the reality of the situation? Its an eye opener. I’ve got a little story about that.
My Funny Valentine……Your attempt at perfection is exhausting me. I mean, really? And also, why? All of those flaws you are constantly picking at—you need to stop it immediately—unless your flaw is chewing with your mouth open. Correct that one NOW. Here’s a secret.
Lucid Dreaming……..I’ve been thinking a lot about goals lately, what they mean, how we reach them and how they change us.
Pray To God But Row For Shore……….How do you move through the most difficult of situations and make it to the other side?
The Gift That Keeps On Giving……….You lucky bastard. You heard me, you magnificent, lucky bastard. I know you may be having some tough times right now. Maybe you feel alone.
My Little Fontanel……….We all have a soft spot. And I don’t mean *a soft spot for someone else*. I mean our own tender fragile spot that shouldn’t be touched.
Loving The God Damned Moment …… Yea, you heard me. This moment–this stinky, metal on metal, fit last season and now it doesn’t moment.
Your 2010 is going to kick it.
By Jill MacGregor
Take all choice away. Just grind me down to a nub. Shove and elbow me right to the very edge. Force me into a corner, take away my wet paint brush and turn off the lights. Do you find that this is when and where you make your most significant changes—or is it just me?
I wish change was a glorious Oprah *aha moment* that I had over International Delights coffee each morning but it just never seems to happen that way.
Sometimes change is a bully, pushing and shoving me into a rage until I finally push back harder. People can do the most amazing things right after they’ve taken the hardest punch and suffered the most severe losses. Just when you think you’ve nothing left, you’re completely depleted and broken, you can push yourself up, harness the thing that makes you mad enough to spit and beat change down until it serves you, it obeys you. Is this extreme a necessary ingredient for us to change?
Change is hard and many times we just don’t wanna. We like puppies and bunnies and unicorns—not change. But those things don’t usually motivate us do they? Did you hear that? I just said happiness doesn’t motivate us to change. Happiness is the warm, snuggly bed that we don’t want to get out of…yet the day calls and the bully shoves.
Chaos seems to be the doorway to change. It’s the wind kicking up and the sirens going off that seems to put us in the starting position.
I hate that.
Fresh Starts. So, here we are at a new year. You can’t really make a fresh start without a little wear around your edges. An occasional dent and scratch that reminds you to try a different path this time. A scar that serves as a badge of sorts, a battle wound, maybe still tender, that makes you wiser, gives you the experience to remain calmer this time, creates a new level of certainty as you make a fresh plan, craft a new path for yourself. The recent past is your compass as you chart a course in the New Year.
Resolutions. Resolutions are all about looking forward which is a good thing but, at the end of the year, it seems just as important to take a moment and assess the goods. What did you accomplish in the last year? What slipped through your fingers? What did you not get to as fast as you’d wished? Looking behind you can be just as important as looking forward at moments like these. So, take a look in your basket—all full of scraps of joy and pain and hope. Pick through the pieces of almost and next year that are stuck to the back of every hope and dream that weights your basket—and look, my friend, at all the accomplishments in there. Really acknowledge them, big and small. Maybe your accomplishments met up with your expectations, maybe they didn’t – but they are still accomplishments.
This could be a more apropos time to take a breather, a temporal sorbet, that cleanses you from the past. Do you feel a dull hollow resonating in you from a previous disappointment? Set it down and leave it here. Allow yourself to move forward refreshed. You’ll move faster without itsr extra weight — there are so many important things to get to that will be far more important to you than this old disappointment.
Reminders. I was reminded of a lot of things this year. Some of these reminders looked like they came in neat little packages until I unwrapped them. Deceptive. Sometimes the seemingly simplest things that happen in our lives can carry the greatest weight. Here are some of the reminders I received this year.
Things change.
Things end.
Change can be harder when the sun is not shining.
It’s ok to not know.
Worrying is a churn that takes you nowhere.
Most everything works out in the end.
Trust is hard but one of the most important things you can do.
Less is so much more, that it was never less—you were just not paying attention.
You can do anything so make this the year you grab at it ALL like a greedy child.
You can stop doing the thing you hate—whether it’s a job, a pattern—just chose to; decide to—nothing happens until you create your square one.
Everyone has a passion—roll in yours like a dog in shit as often as possible.
Smile more, really, you’re kind of scaring people.
Relax and breathe—sometimes you allow things that aren’t important to worry you to pieces.
Always ask for what you want and keep asking until you get it—Don’t ask, don’t get—even with the Universe.
Simple is rarely simple—there are just parts that are yet undiscovered or unfinished.
My wish for you. I wish you bounty as we enter the New Year. Bounty in every guise—love you feel you may not deserve, success that comes at you like a raging locomotive, fulfillment that wraps its arms around you and makes you purr like a cat, the cup that runneth over repeatedly, the forgiveness that comes unexpectedly, the understanding that allows you to be just who you are, the peace that allows you to move through difficult moments unmarred, the strength that you didn’t think you had at the exact moments you need it and the ability to give all the kindness your heart wishes it would receive.
Here’s to your wonderful 2010.
by Jill MacGregor
I am seven.
I am finally getting to grow my hair out and occasionally, my mother who has fine, stick straight hair, will give my very wavy hair a perm. Vicarious Lilt Permanent Wave…
I don’t know why either.
My dad takes me to the Planetarium on what feels like a regular basis and I like it. I love it when they turn out the lights and its pitch dark and the voice and the stars come on at the same time. It doesn’t make me feel small or insignificant. It makes me feel a part of something big that I don’t understand.
We have fun, my parents and me. In my spare time, I am trying to learn how to swear. I am not very good at it and swear like someone who is just learning English– but I seem to always get caught when swearing (with poor syntax and improper conjugation) at one of the neighborhood boys.
I have mastered riding my bike without training wheels and have stopped careening into the fins of our Oldsmobile (ow) and the mailbox (ow, but a smaller one).
We live in Peoria, Il. We will live here just short of two years. We will live here just long enough to complete a very important task. And if you don’t believe that everything happens for a reason, I hope this will change your mind. And if it doesn’t change your mind…I think you might be visited by three ghosts tonight.
I regularly defend my friend Wee. His name is really Lee but he has a wittle wisp and it takes me a long time to get that his name is Lee, not Wee, and what a lisp really is. He is smaller and gets picked on and I don’t mind pushing a bully. I am not a delicate little girl.
I have been an only child for seven years. And one day in July 1969, just a few weeks before Neil Armstrong is the first man to walk on the moon, my parents tell me I am going to have a little brother…at the end of the week.
Hmmm.
Jack, my brother. I don’t know if I’d say I was excited about the idea of having a brother but I was definitely curious. If my parents had said we were getting a puppy, I would have been excited. We all visited the adoption agency in our Sunday best and were led to a sunny room with a white rocking chair. And we meet Jack. He is days old and has that tiny old man look that newborns often have. We are told that Jack has the same birthday as my mom and we all quietly recognize this as special.
We don’t quite know how to act because our excitement is growing with every minute we spend with our new, old man, Jack. We could laugh hysterically or cry or sit staring in quiet amazement that here we are…HERE WE ARE, a very different family than we were 5 minutes ago. Everything was different yet at the same time it was as if we’d always been this family of four and all previous moments in our non-Jack, threesome world had disappeared and been swiftly replaced by moments that we’d always shared with Jack.
We all settled in.
My brother, Jack. Someone I don’t know gave him that big nose and that even bigger brain. He’s all MacGregor with his weird sense of humor, highly functional made up language, love of blowing up fireworks in near illegal and always dangerous ways. All MacGregor.
But then he’s also very, “I don’t get your art. It doesn’t look like anything. Maybe if you painted a tree.” (I do abstracts.) And very “I don’t understand the movie. I’m going to Wikipedia it.” These things crack me up.
Fast forward to December. My Dad informs me that my Aunt Margaret and her family are going to spend Christmas with us. Aunt Margaret is my Dad’s sister. Her family includes Uncle Don (never met him) and my cousins Greg, Mark, Donna and Lori (never met them, either). These cousins are all older than me. There are 6 people coming to stay with us in our 3 bedroom duplex. We were being invaded and the thought was thrilling.
So, 6 of them and 4 of us.
Family can just happen in a moment, whether you’re genetically linked or not. The main thing is that everyone agrees, “Yes, this is what we are. Our tribe. Our strange little tribe.” I remember this Christmas so fondly because there was a thrill in not being the oldest…I did not have to be as responsible as the others and I liked that. And there was so much funny. The jokes went back and forth at a crazy speed and although my kid brain could only observe and not fully participate in the zingers, I knew this was a skill I wanted to develop. I wanted to play like this!
In this little three bedroom duplex, there were suddenly 10 people. Plus a Christmas tree that was so big (obviously a representation of the excitement everyone was feeling) that it wouldn’t fit in the house. We had to saw off the top two feet and it was still so large for the room that the lower branches were flush with the floor. We had an obese Christmas tree. Your Christmas tree is so fat—how fat is it?!—that when it sits around the house…its really sits around the house. Really—we couldn’t put presents under the tree because there was NO under the tree. There was tree adjacent seating for all presents. I think we had to cut some of the limbs off in the back so that it didn’t take up half the room.
But the tree was a symbol. A symbol of our excitement at being together. Our swelling, uncontainable, irrepressible excitement that we were all under the same roof in a space far too small to contain us and therefore there just may be some bursting at the seams. We felt like an army, our numbers had grown so quickly overnight. We were together—some of us for the first times in our lives. And then there was this little baby—what kind of lottery did we win?
We were lucky and we knew it. It made us loud. It made the Christmas tree take up half the room. It was such a great Christmas, all stuffed in that duplex with the gia-nourmous Christmas tree like a sausage fixing to burst its casing, our excitement and energy vibrating the walls.
It was so different than I was used to and I liked it.
Because of our overstuffed house, people slept were they fell. My cousin Lori was (and still is) three years older than I am. And suddenly she was an older sister and I was a younger sister—I think we both enjoyed the change of roles. When you are 7 and she is 10, those 3 years become as vast and unconnected as if we were different dialects of the same language. As we lay in the dark on our bed of fluffy blankets, we decided Christmas was a perfect time for scary stories. This is when my cousin Lori told me the story of the china doll that came to life at night and sawed the head off of its current owner with its crazy big fingernail. As she whispered the story in the dark, I saw that doll with its unblinking eyes and frozen smile coming at me with a speed that was never fast and never slow yet always gaining on me…I am forever put off by those dolls now. Shiver…blah…
It is Christmas morning and we have all slept in the same house as if we attended a party that never ended. We have opened our presents and now lay amidst the rubble of paper and bows and thank you’s and I felt full. Full in the best way imaginable—as if having everyone to our house was the perfect meal and I had eaten the exact amount to be full but not too full. Having everyone together, in my mind, we became the family that wouldn’t stop growing—first Jack and now all these raucous cousins—and it was, well ,it was perfect.
Jack, in his special Christmas pajamas—I can still see them. The pajamas were red and white with a big Christmas mouse on them and a little Santa hat that Jack could wear on his very bald head. He was no longer the tiny baby we had brought home 6 months ago, in fact, that day wasn’t even in my memory. He had just always been with us, just like these new cousins of mine, only far away, and we just hadn’t met yet.
It only takes a moment to love a child. In the snap of your fingers, everything is different, as if that love has been in you and growing for as long as you’ve been alive.
This was the first Christmas I understood how big family could be, how loud, how crowded, how different—and how inclusive all those things were. We were lucky. We were lucky that we just happened to live in Peoria at the same time when Jack was born and that the state adoption agency, who had said no for so many years to my a little bit older, already had one child parents, finally, one day, just said yes. Really…just said yes– and we don’t know why after so many no’s. Yes, to a family and a mother who happened to have the same birthday as her new, little boy.
The next place we moved to was West Lafayette, IN, home of Purdue University. Neil Armstrong graduated from Purdue. I’m just saying…
No, you shut up.
Don’t mention coincidence to me. Can I make you understand? Walking on the moon or a new little brother…these were things that happened against all odds and changed everything from that day forward.
It’s the time of year when we’re thinking about what to give people in our lives and also what we’d like to get ourselves. I have an unfortunate holiday shopping practice: one for them, one for me, one for them, one for me.
Think of the list you’ve made for yourself over the years—all of the tangible and intangible things you feel would make you happy if only they were yours. It’s easy to spend a lot of time wishing for what’s on that list without making plans for what you’ll do once you get it.
There’s something on the other side of getting. It’s doing. How will things change when you get what you want—really think about it. What would you do differently if you had those things? There’s one thing that probably won’t change and that’s you. Because you are the same you on either side of the equation.
You + getting what you want finally = still you
You + not getting what you want = kind of the same you, isn’t it?
Of course, there are certain things that we wish for that do make an instant difference like a healing, a baby, money, for example. These are gifts that can transform us and the situations we find ourselves in. Maybe you want those things and haven’t received them yet—what would happen if you lived your life as if you had? Because I am wondering what would happen if you started living your life as if you’d already received those things you wanted. Live your life as if you’d been healed. Give love to others as if you were a mother or a father. Feel as if you always have more than enough and sharing is second nature. Enact the transformation regardless.
I’ve said it before—emulate. What actions are suspended while you stand on the shore squinting in the sun in hopes of seeing your ship on the horizon? Think about yourself waiting on the shore–So much is on hold while you wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.
Waiting is not an action.
Update your list. Think about how you will implement your gifts. This can be the year things happen and you need to be ready.
Be the gift you wish you would be given.
It’s just corny enough during this time of the year to grab onto to thoughts like these and put them into action. Some things just seem more plausible when children are busy believing in Santa Claus and adults are busy playing along.
by Jill MacGregor
Who’s on Your Team?
We all have a team–a team being that group of people, family and friends, that you rely on in good times and bad. They are the people you reach for first. They become your comfort, your security blanket, your voice of reason.
You have a special language with these people, one that’s been developed throughout the years and it’s punctuated with snorts, raised eyebrows and smiles that say more than words. With these people, their actions don’t have to be monumental to be significant.
Who Embraces Your Contradictions?
I am feeling sorry for myself; I am not going to lie. Someone is stealing my sounding board. I’m becoming aware of a tightening circle. No one’s dying. Nothing sad is happening. A friend is going off to live a dream. I’m just so sad that she’s doing it so far away from me. And I wonder how I will ever be able to replace the necessary ingredient she is in my life — that I will now only have on a limited basis. It’s like someone took my salt.
So, here’s some real change. People leaving and slowly getting used to the hole that is created by their absence.
Those people—you know, the ones you hold close because they are the people who truly get you. They like your weird parts and, Lord knows, you were blessed with plenty there. These special people refer to your weird parts as your personality and they like it—they even search it out. They choose to be around it. It makes them happier…somehow.
Those people share the wins in your life, significant or tiny, with the same amount of zeal and are always there to remind you of the victories when you lose sight of the progress you’ve made. They lead the cheer, they get people on their feet and they remind you of the excitement.
Among your friends, I imagine you have a tiny handful–a core–that keeps the machine that is you running smoothly and productively. This select group of friends understands why you run when you really just want someone to ask you to stay, why you laugh when your eyes rim with tears, why you push when you are hoping for agreement.
I quietly feel the emptiness in preparation of her leaving, as if I’ve reached my hand into a dark cave to feel if there’s anything lurking. I test what my world might be like without my friend a couple miles away, without the casual “of course”-ness which is the foundation of our friendship. And, she’s taking her husband and daughter with her too. That’s just adding insult to injury.
I will miss all of them.
But why am I such a sad sack? She and her family are making this enormous life change, leaving a city they’ve lived in for 19 years to *go in search of…* Right—dot dot dot. That’s fantastic! She gets to live a dream. Her face is lit up. The list is long, thrilling and unclear as to what the exciting end product might be. They are like blind people forced to work with their other senses, knowing the new situation needs to feel like this and a part of their new life may do that but not knowing what they have their hands on until they compare notes. Enormity.
I also look at my friends leaving with the big suspicious side eye. Let me explain why. My friend is also an impetus—she does something big, talks about the change, gets me thinking about things in my life and then I do something big. I guess I sometimes need her to prime the pump.
So, I watch them go. And I wonder how my life will change not only because of their absence but because of their example.
If you liked this you might want to read My Funny Valentine.
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