Thank you son, for introducing me to the public beaches of writing.
Here’s to the adventure of my first blog.
A series of thoughts - flowing.
I’m thinking about questions. How we avoid them. How we starve for the right ones. How the right question can cause us to turn around and head in a new direction. How the wrong questions (victim) or lack of questioning can drive us deeper into our dark places. Questions are to the human mind like a mirror, a light in a dark room, an invitation to adventure, a friend’s hand pulling us out of a “stuck” place.
The intent of a question has a mysterious energetic pull.
I remember a question that a fine professional asked me once. It changed the trajectory of my life. It opened my awareness to what life could be. While he left the body in 1983 he continues to be a light on the path of my choices.
At 26 he asked me a question, over and over, until I could ask the question myself.
His key question drew me out of a deep depression - I didn’t know about depression in 1977.
IT was a question that has resounded and created a crossroads decision-point in my life. Just when I thought the road was never going to change, his question shook the roots of my unquestioned worldview. Thank God for questioning our worldview. It may be the most important skill we can develop - especially when life feels blue, dark, or impossible.
A question is just words. His intent carried the words into my way of believing - way of hoping - way of surrendering to hope and hopelessness. His question freed me to question the boundary lines of “what’s possible” in my life.
This question became my favorite tsunami. Sweeping away the past. Sweeping away my self-limiting way of understanding life.
The question - “Is it true?” “Could it be different than what you think now?” “Would you like your life be better?”
Like a mirror into my beliefs, values, perceptions, attitudes, dreams, demons, daggers and delusions. “Is it true?” caused me to examine me - deeply. No one had cared very deeply about me before that question from Ned. He was the first therapist - and the most influential person in my life, after my sons. Ned gave me five years of therapy - for free. About six months into the therapy I had to stop because I realized I would never be able to pay the bill and go to college and raise to sons. When I told him I would have to stop he said something I’d never heard, felt, or considered before then. It was a series of questions - which led to the ultimate question.
“When you think about the way you feel about yourself today - right now - and over the past few weeks; when you consider how much you care about yourself, how much you know how to care about yourself; when you think about the person you saw in the mirror this morning, her feelings, her attitude, her dreams, desires, and her dark places (that we all have); when you realize that the quality of your experiences are and will be determined by the degree of love, awareness, and care for yourself; when you remember that the person in the mirror will create your life - with every large and small decision, do you trust the person in the mirror to make life-affirming, self-loving decisions which will help you fulfill your dreams for your life and family? Do you see the person in the mirror capable of expanding your world to include more security, love, intimacy, satisfaction, accomplishment, joy and opportunity for your sons? Do you see the person in the mirror strong enough to imagine and forge a life you’d want to live - including the softer you - that thrives by keeping love growing? It grows you know. Love expands as you learn how to let it expand. Do you think the person you saw in the mirror this morning will be able to create a life worth living, a life worth remembering?”
I knew the answer, even if I didn’t know how. Having the big picture was enough to help me realize that the only thing that really mattered in my life - was the journey to untangling and discovering who I was then - and who I was born to be. “To be - or not to be, that is the question.” Shakespeare’s question seems to be “the” question that leaves a person in the center of a crossroad in life. Will I choose to be all that is meant to be in me - or will I shrink back to some predictable misery who’s only comfort is its predictability?
When I thought about that “person in the mirror making decisions about me” I saw a wounded and scarcely composed 20 something, afraid of making mistakes, having made so many. I saw my core shrunken into a density as mighty as a black hole…the source of a Napoleonic-Scarlet O’Hara-driven personna that carried me through survival and into accomplishments for nearly 20 years. The desire to protect my sons and create an example for them - that winning over and through life’s challenges is possible - was driven by my fear that the softer desires may emerge and undermine my drive to be a noble example of possibility in the lives of my sons. The conflict that fueled and decorated my courage in those times was the “other side” of the driven-me. The soft longing to create an enjoy a loving home for my sons was the sacrifice I made for the demonstration of character. It may not have been a very good decision. In fact, it’s like Ned’s question, “Is it true?” I’ve asked myself - “Is it true - that you needed to show the boys - that you could rise past a high school education, past working as a waitress, past self-destructive relationships, to triumph into healthy mental, physical, intellectual, and social accomplishments? What would my sons have gained - by watching me suffer with one third the income, and more time at home? What would my sons have gained by having me satisfied to live in the Wisconsin-Minnesota midwest? What would they have become - if they never knew the experience of me striving for the “social good?” Is it true? Questions. What a wonderful force when delivered from deep intentions.
Five years of Tuesdays with Ned made the difference that made me who I am today. What did we do every Tuesday in group and individual therapy? Two hours of group and 50 minutes of individual therapy? Like washing the feet of the disciples, Ned would patiently draw out the pain - and educate the potential in me.
Ned was able to speak about the fragile and ugly in a way that felt like a search light or nurturing reassurance. He spelled out the facts of hope in broken lives and lost souls. He guided us back to the soil of our being, the foundations of our “home” and the force that supplies growth to everything on this planet. Like reviving and finding and mending frozen, lost, or damaged souls and spirits, Ned was a farmer of people. A wise gardener and fellow sojourner, Ned attracted misguided children masquerading as adults.
“Core issues are the source.” he’d say. “Go sperlunking to the source of it all, and you’ll have it all. It’ll all transform to usefulness. Go to the core. It’s worth the journey. It’s scarry, but I have a light. It’s wearisome and often takes a long time. Perservere,” he’d say, “it’ll be the best investment for your life.”
“It’s all very simple and normal.” he’d say. “It’s all about our core. If we don’t know about, or feel, or experience, or know how to find resources from our core; if our core is fractured, fragmented, hollowed-out, frozen over with cold, lost, stolen, frightened into invisibility, or given away (as it often is in foolish young love), we are left without a compass, without gravity, without a sense of control in our lives. When the vicissitudes of life hurl, toss and confound us - we are left helpless. Victims and vermin surviving a life we do not choose; and by default, choosing a life we do not like. Like a big sailboat without a rudder in storm or calm seas - it doesn’t matter. Life looks pale and untoward when we lack a sure connection to our “core.” Until we find our core we’re going to have the same quality of struggle - without a higher quality of satisfaction. It’s all about finding “home” in ourselves. Literally “putting the pieces of ourselves together.” Like the straw man got pulled apart by the wicked monkeys in the Wizard of Oz, when we don’t make decisions reflective of our values, principles, goals and dreams, we end up in pieces on the floor of someone else’s life.
The constitutionalized ‘inalienable right to happiness,’ or “joy” or exhuberance and “love” become hollow concepts or flat platitudes echoing in the hollow cores of people who’re certain, or too afraid, or needing guidance but unaware. Ned infused the drive to believe past platitudes, past certainty, past apathy, past agnosticism, past blame, past victimhood, past paranoia, and past shame. Just like a great leader leaves a little of him or herself in the people who benefit by serving the leader - Ned left a great passion for possibility in those of us who had the chance to be served by him.
Edgar Allen Poe’s “Raven, never more!” stirs my soul to remember to fight the darkness - at whatever price - for the core is the store of knowledge worth mining - before life takes it’s final toll.
People who neglect the opportunity to grow psychologically, spiritually, and intellectually are the focus of my work. Like Mother Teresea, I seem to have an ache and burden to help people see past the shadows that overcome them.
Sometimes, for some hardened survivors, the quest offered by Ned’s question, “Is it true?” has to be asked hundreds of times. Like a storm at sea, it takes much to break their untested beliefs, their defiant ignorance, the loyal certainty.
I find it curious that people who lack the imagination and resources to imagine a different world - would so adamantly resist the notion that their lives could have a finer quality experience, if only they’d be willing to shift a few degrees in their thinking. [Perception = possibility. Shift a few degrees and explore the possibilities.]
But! I was there. It was called depression. There’s certainty in depression. There’s a peace that’s long since been needed. There’s a retreat from a reality we don’t want to live, and don’t know how to change. There’s peace in certainty. Sometimes death, looks like certainty. From a certain perspective that is. But of course, shift perspective a few degrees - and suddenly - death - especially through “quantum physics” and spirituality - looks like the birth into a new life. Therapy can be a death. In fact, a welcomed death. So, when people want to die, when I’ve wanted to die, I know it’s my soul calling out to live! The thought of dieing or giving up - whether it be in depressive states - or cogent clarity - are metaphors calling for a decision that leads to more nurturing life. Learning the way to the nurturing life - often requires an experienced sojourner, family member, or friend.
My decision was easy. I accepted Ned’s offer to receive his psychological support - for free for five years. The gift that created a life worth living.
Through his patiently persistent, resistance-grinding perseverence and deepening quest-inviting questions, I slowly began to trust that his guidance was well-intended and useful. For the first three years I felt like Helen Keller might have felt, being taught to speak and understand a new language, a new reality, a new quality of life. Being taught to see myself differently. Being taught to doubt the “old” way of processing or understanding and repsonding to my experiences. Can you imagine what drives a therapist like Ned - to patiently persevere with people who don’t trust, and so creatively resist, even the most rudimentary rules for a better quality life?
I learned I was strong enough to live in uncertainty. Eventually, as I became stronger, as my core healed, I learned that uncertainty is the opening to the next stage of life. Uncertainty is the indication that change is happening. Uncertainty precedes discovery and new choices. Remain alert - uncertainty lives in the shadows, on the edge of familiarity, and under the eaves of the house we call home.
As my world expanded - new questions arrived. Just about the time I thought I’d “grown” enough to be happy the rest of my life (on this or that plateau-of-perspective) Ned would knock softly on the door frame of my reality and provide a question that would invite me back to the cavern of my core…bringing ever more light, and eventually - releasing my core - into every cell, molecule, and atom of my body.
Ned’s questions freed me from the certainty of a life painted by people who didn’t know how to love or dream big for me. Ned’s questions simply invited me to find myself - past all the past - into the dark core of the parts of me I’d hidden - to be retrieved a later time in my life - when it was safer. Thanks to Ned - I took the journey of discovery - to retrieve, nourish, nurture, and gain rapport with the core aspects - which fueled my dreams, stamina, and courage.
Like Helen Keller’s teacher, Ms. Sullivan, Ned himself had climbed out of his own dungeon and hell. As a fifth grader, paralyzed by fear and shyness, he kept flunking tests at school. In the 30’s they didn’t know about learning disabilities or emotionally slowly-developing children. Ned was labeled “retarded” and ushered in five years of mindless activities. In the 10th grade, an English teacher noticed he was exceptionally bright. She nurtured his writing voice, although he was still painfully shy, and had an extra helping of low self-esteem, having accepted the label, “retarded” from fifth to tenth grade. Ned described that the woman who saved his life also attended his PhD graduation from Columbia University, where he graduated Summa Cum Laude.
So it’s all about discovery depth and breadth questions. It’s all about what happens between the mirror and thee.
Notice the questions people ask you. Notice the people who don’t ask questions about you. Notice questions that assail your conscious and positive self-regard. Notice questions that invite you with love and courage - to go sperlunking - for your own good. Notice people who would rather you didn’t go sperlunking. Avoid those people…unless you’re looking into the mirror of your own secret desire - not to know yourself. People are mirrors. Useful to see who shows up in our lives - as mirrors of who we are - or what we’re doing about growing - or not growing - in our lives - at any given time.
The beginning of personal growth - is noticing. Just noticing what is happening in your life. Like putting a puzzle together - you gotta see the pieces - and realize there’s a bigger picture to be seen - when you put the pieces together.
Keen on noticing - and keep on expecting a big picture to come into view.
Noticing provides “right conditions for growth”. Like a seed planted in the dark earth - away from the sun - it does nevertheless - get warmed by the sun. Away from the pelting rain - it is nurtured like an embryo - in the held comfort of the rich soil. Darkness nurtures the seed until it awakens to fulfill it’s destiny. Seeds have one thrust in life - to be. Seeds live to become what they are intended to be.
The courage to be more and more of who we fully are - is the essential thrust of “growing.” The seed expands and releases the plant. Let yourself expand. Find support. Find more people whom you trust to honor and discuss deeper questions.
Go sperlunking for your core. Be patient and persistent.
