Opportunities, Cycles, Phases and the Good Life [ Post # 27 ]

They say opportunities come and they go. That this or that is the opportunity of a lifetime. This is your opportunity, it will never come again. Or, perhaps, that’s okay, you’ll have another opportunity later sometime.

Cycles… all of life is a cycle. There’s conception, birth, life, and eventually, death. (Okay, spiritually oriented people will say there is more beyond death, but that’s for another essay, not this one.) All of life is a cycle. Even our sun is in a life cycle, scientists say eventually our sun will die out and earth will one day be gone. And, all cycles are composed of phases. All of life can be broken down into phases.

So, what does all of this have to do with the “Good Life?” Well, as I see it, just about everything. When I think about the good life, my thoughts often include thinking about the opportunities that come our way during our life and what we do with them. Do we even see them, become aware of them, or just ignore them or because of ignorance or fear just let them pass by? We do have “windows of opportunity” and we never know how long they will last, do we?

I’ve mentioned many opportunities that came along in my life in my previous blogs, so I won’t rehash all of those experiences here. Let me just say that I am glad I had the opportunities I had and I’m glad I usually took advantage of them for my own good and advancement on my life’s journey. Taking advantage of the opportunities changed my life several times.

I have also taken time to realize exactly what phase of life I was in as I journeyed on my path. In youth I worked on getting an education. During my working life phase, I worked hard and tried to manage things and finances so I could someday retire. Yes, it seemed like an impossible dream to get to retirement and enjoy life without reporting to a boss, corporation and the other unpleasantries of the working life phase. I survived and succeeded in that phase. It seemed impossible for a long time, but you know what, I made it!

So now I’m in the retirement phase of my life. The last third of life, if you divide a long life into thirds of thirty years each. I am enjoying the good life, no doubt about it. My hard work and perseverance has paid off. Life is good.

Many people live what they would consider a miserable life or at least an unhappy life. They continually complain about how “life treats them,” how they have made so many bad decisions, how people and life have treated them poorly, etc. etc. Yet, on the other hand, some people seem to have very little in life as far as possessions and wealth but are very happy people.

So, what’s the deal? Well, as I see it, all of life is made up of moments of decisions. Every day we make numerous decisions, day in and day out. We make decisions on what we will do, what we will think, what actions we will take, etc. Every day. And these decisions are cumulative. They determine the direction our life will take. We get to where we are by the many thoughts, actions, and decisions we make daily.

And then there are the big moments, the big decisions, the big opportunities that come along. What do we do then? Well, as I see it, if we make the best use of our daily moments, our daily opportunities, when the big momentous opportunities come, we are somewhat prepared for that time. We have been acting and thinking in ways that lead us to the right direction to take. We are on the path of the “good life.”

So, this is how I see my life at this point. At this phase of life, my “retirement” phase, I am enjoying, as they say, the “fruits of my labors.” I have made many good choices and decisions and the result is the life I’m living now. What about pain, suffering, grief, hurt, disappointment, loss, etc.? Have I avoided these? Of course not, those experiences are all part of life, for everyone. I am no exception. What I’m saying is that regardless of the apparent “bad times, dark times, confusing times,” I believe we can create our own good life, no matter what. It really is a result of the way we have handled the opportunities, the cycles of life, and the different phases of life. This is how I see it, this is what I believe. I’ve lived a good life, I’m living a good life. I have achieved my childhood dreams. I’ve known success in so many areas, I’ve found genuine love in my relationships. I am grateful.

Wally

The Garden

It’s interesting that in religion and myths of the beginning of life on this planet, the “garden” is the starting point of civilization. I think most of us can relate to a love of a nice garden, a nice garden setting in which to relax, to sit in silence, to contemplate or visit with friends and family or just nature alone. The beauty of a nice garden is a transcendent experience.

I’ve always had a love of gardens, it’s part of my love of nature, beauty, mountains, lakes, oceans and spiritual encounters. I have enjoyed gardens from a young age. I remember being introduced to vegetable gardening in elementary school. My school had a nice garden and we got to work in it and grow crops. I noticed that these days the garden there is gone and has been paved over. I guess schools don’t do those types of activities any more. That’s sad.

At home as a kid, we had a large back yard and I got to plant my vegetable garden every year and I loved the experience of growing food we could eat. There was a long stretch of many years when I could not continue with my vegetable gardening, living in apartments and being too busy making a living, etc. I didn’t realize what I was missing until I had a yard again and my spouse-to-be asked if I liked to do vegetable gardening. That prompt got me back into the practice of growing food again.

Now that I’ve returned to my old childhood hobby of vegetable gardening I have started thinking about all the life lessons the garden gives us. It teaches us very subtly if we are aware and contemplate what our interaction with nature is all about. Leaving the big world out there and retreating to our secret garden is a spiritual retreat of sorts.

Our everyday world can be almost totally removed from the natural world, the world of nature, the world of God’s creation some would say. The world of God’s beauty and wonders. We allow big industry to produce our food, we never even have to think about where things come from, we just go to the store and buy whatever we want, whenever we want.

Now, I was thinking I was so original and creative in thinking about the lessons gardens teach us about life, but just for fun I googled “Lessons gardens teach us” and “the garden as a metaphor for life,” etc. and I was amazed how many blogs covered this topic in an excellent way. Better than I could, I thought. So maybe I’ll just state a few simple things I’ve learned along the way while tending my garden.

The things I have learned from having gardens are many. I have to first have a desire to grow a vegetable garden. No desire, no interest and nothing will happen. It is just a thought. Once I create the desire, then I have to do some planning. I have to think it all out, have a vision of what I want. I have to have some knowledge of the basics of gardening. I do my research for what I need to know. Relying totally on trial and error is not going to work out very well.

With a plan in mind, the seeds or plants must be purchased and the project is underway. I do the best I can in setting up the garden. The soil, the location and the space required are worked out . Once the project is underway, it takes continual attention if it is to be a successful garden. The watering needs must be taken care of daily or there will be problems. As time goes on, weeds will appear and at that time the decision must be made to rid the garden of weeds as they appear or if I decide to be lazy and not take care of them, they will take over and mess up my well laid plans for a successful harvest.

So, isn’t life a lot like this? Some people have no vision in life, they really have no plans, no desires, no commitments, no overall plan. They just drift through life and get caught up in this thing or that, this addiction or that bad habit. And when weeds appear in their life, they often just ignore them and they, the weeds, end up growing wild and taking things over. There is no maintenance in their life, no cleaning up, no weeding out what is not beneficial to a good life.

If the garden project is successful, a nice plentiful harvest is the wonderful (and tasty) reward. Life is good. We have learned how to produce success in life and enjoy it and share it with others. And, we can look forward to doing this again, repeating the success and possibly changing some of the crops, trying new things and seeing how it all goes from year to year.

As I’ve said, I’ve found several blogs on the internet covering this subject of how the garden is a metaphor for life, and they are very good. I’d recommend checking them out if you are interested. In this short essay I just wanted to give some of my ideas on the subject. I have learned a lot from my time over the years spent in the dirt growing my vegetables. It has been a great learning experience.

Wally

Death – The Big Taboo [ Post # 25 ]

With my cousin John

Yes, in our culture and society, they say death is the big taboo. It is not to be talked about, thought about, or in any real way dealt with. I see that when the subject comes up in conversations. People want to move on and avoid the subject. I see that and somewhat understand that, but I don’t think that is good, in the long run, as it’s a subject we all have to deal with many times in life, and ultimately when we reach the end of our life, which in many cases, we never know when that will be.

For some reason, death has always been a part of my life, sometimes staring me right in the face. I remember talking with someone a while back and they said, “you know, I’ve never really had to deal with death because nobody I’ve know in any close way has ever died.” Wow, I thought, that’s hard to believe. You’ve never really experienced death up close at all and you are in middle age.

The picture in this blog post is my first encounter with death, at a very early age. It is a picture of me ( on the left) and my cousin John playing together in our yard the day before he died. His family had brought him down to Los Angeles from Oregon for heart surgery and they were staying with us. I don’t remember much except that the next day after this picture was taken, his mother and my mother (sisters) were crying and wailing all day long, non-stop. It was a miserable day. I really didn’t understand what had happened. Maybe they explained it to me that he had died, but I didn’t really comprehend what that meant.

I remember when friends I knew in high school were killed in a car crash in our neighborhood. It was a shock, of course. The next major death was my mother’s when I was twenty-five. The day before she died she expressed her wish to me privately that she wanted to be buried in her family’s plot in Florida and did not my father to carry through with his plans to have her cremated and scattered at sea by the Neptune Society. Now, my father was very stubborn and did not want to do anything different than what he was planning on doing. I stood up to him and demanded he allow her to be buried in her family plot. Fortunately, I had just started working for an airline the year before and they provided free transportation for her body and us to Florida. I had a very strong will to carry out her final wishes, no matter what it took.

Thirteen years later my father died. During this time I also had several friends die. I never remember a long stretch of time where there were no funerals or memorial services to go to. Death, it seemed, was always occurring in my life.

An interesting event occurred when I was in college. One summer, instead of returning to California from Seattle (where I was attending college) for the summer, I was offered an opportunity to stay in Seattle and spend the summer living in a mortuary as a caretaker of the facility at night and to help out during the day with assisting the morticians doing their work. I was given an apartment in the mortuary, so I had an up-close view of the business and the bodies, being alone at night and opening the building for night visitations and wakes, etc. Once again, death staring me in the face, literally. It was an interesting time and I took pictures just so I would remember the experience later in life. The one lesson I learned from that experience was that there was no way I wanted to spend every day for the rest of my working life dealing with the death business. It would be too much to handle on a daily basis. Death, day in and day out. I did have an aunt and uncle that were very successful in owning a funeral home, but I guess I missed out on inheriting that gene .

I wrote a blog earlier about the large number of friends I worked with that died in the past several years and how I was experiencing “survivor’s” guilt about surviving all of them, many my age. From 2015 to 2018 I was going to funerals or memorial services at least once a month, and that is no exaggeration. So many friends are gone, people I worked closely with and were my age. It’s a weird feeling. I’m amazed I’m still here. I never really expected to live much beyond age forty or so. It was just a feeling I had most of my early life, probably because of my childhood depression, etc.

So, while I have not had the technical, well known type of “near death experience,” or NDE as it’s called, I have had two experiences of death in my life that have stayed with me and are very vivid today as they were the day I experienced them. The first one was around age six or so when I had my tonsils removed in surgery. I remember being wheeled into the operating room and the ether mask being placed over my face. When that was done, I experienced the weirdest feeling. It was pitch black, blacker than black, in a way. The ether was applied and I was told by the doctors to count backwards from 100. I felt I was going back to God. I can’t really describe the experience in words, but it is as real today as I think about it as it was sixty-five years ago. My thought at the time was, so this is what dying is like.

My second experience of death was in the 1970’s. It was a drug-induced state, I admit. I did not really experiment with drugs much at all, but for a short time I did. This night I had a very realistic experience of dying. Again, it is impossible to put this experience into words, but I was facing my death, a real experience of death. I knew this is what dying was like. This was a taste of the final life event, a very realistic full awareness type of experience. I was confronting what I had to confront, letting go of everything in life. Like I said, impossible to put into words.

So, what I’m saying is that I have not had the pleasure of avoiding death thoughts or being able to avoid the topic of death like some people have. For some reason I was destined to have to confront this subject my whole life. It’s always been right there before me in one way or another.

I was reading recently about how some people avoid dealing with death and others seem to just jump right in and think about it, converse about it. There are those that are called “death investigators,” they really study the subject and have a kind of fascination with it. Maybe that’s what I am, maybe not. All I know is that it is a fascinating mystery, as is all of life. I recall that when I was in college and had some free time, I would go up the hill from my dormitory and walk through the cemetery next to the campus. I would stroll through the grave sites in deep thought about things. I know, saying this sounds weird, but that’s what I did.

When I talk about these things I sometimes encounter harsh reactions from people. I’ve been told to not go to any more funerals or memorial services, do not go visit people in hospitals or any ill people, especially terminally ill people. Wow, talk about being in denial. That advise just does not resonate with me. That’s not how I choose to handle this subject. In fact, I have recently visited a couple of morticians and mortuary counselors to discuss end of life issues and planning. I have been writing down our final plans (for me and my spouse) and wishes while we have clear minds. That’s how I am handling this stuff. It’s not easy or fun, but there’s no way to avoid this final big project or event that’s going to happen. We do have to deal with life as it is and live in the mystery of it all.

Wally

Paths Not Taken [ Post # 24 ]

Ok, Yes, in a previous blog I said I do not waste my time and energy with thinking “what if… if only I had… my life could have been so different, better, etc.” But in this post I am taking a different approach to that thought of “what if?” Don’t we all think at times how we could have taken a different path than the one we took in our life, gone in a different direction, made a different choice? I’m not talking about a serious, regretful thinking of this subject, but more of a lighthearted, curious, fun imagining of how our life would have been if we chose a different path than the one we chose.

My life has turned out great, I would say perfect, so I have no regrets, just a curiosity of how it could have been if things had been just a little different. The pictures you see in this post are a few from my childhood and my college graduation. In my childhood I was a child model and I was in advertisements in the local newspapers (the Los Angeles Times, etc.) and I was on the cover of a photography magazine and in magazine advertisements. You see, my family was into this sort of thing. My siblings and my mother were in the movie business (my brother and sister are listed in the IMDb website for the movie work they did a long time ago). So we had an “in” with the Hollywood business to some degree, but for some reason we eventually got away from that work. I wonder how far I could have gone with what I was doing with my modeling work? Which is interesting now, considering how many friends I have that are “in the business,” as they say. I guess I did not have the interest or drive that my friends had in their youth. My actor friends can’t even consider not acting, it is such a part of them. I never had that kind of ambition for that type of work, I guess.

I mentioned in previous blogs what an important thing it was in my life to go to college, since many people told me to not even try as I was not that smart, etc. Well, I persisted and had a great time with my college experience. Which makes me think, what if I had pursued an academic career, had become a scholar, professor, etc.? I think it did cross my mind, even when I went on to graduate school (theological seminary). I think if I had another life to live and had to do something different than I did this time around, I might want to do that. If you ever watched the early episodes of the tv show “Madame Secretary,” I was really interested in the husband of the Secretary of State and his role as a professor of comparative religions. Yes, I think that would be a career I would want in a second life.

In my childhood and youth I wanted to be an airline pilot. Now I’m glad that did not happen as I had wished. I did become a commercial pilot and flight instructor at a local airport and that was great, but now I realize I would not want to have been just an airline pilot for all of my career. I’ve known some friends that did have that job and gave it up after a while to do other things when their interests changed. So, another time I chose the correct path for me.

There were dark ties in my life when I considered doing some very bad things. I seriously came close to messing up my life. But through some long, deep thinking, I decided against taking actions I was considering. Another ‘”turning point” where I took the right path for my life.

So, here I am now, having lived a great portion of my life. I am extremely satisfied with the choices I made, the path I did take and glad I did not take the other paths that were facing me and tempting me. I feel my life has been guided down the correct path for me. I feel it as s Divine guidance. Call it what you may, but I know I could have messed up really bad at times and I was “saved” from early destruction in my life.

I have talked a little bit about this subject with a few friends. I was really surprised what I learned by talking about this stuff. One friend, who owned her own business, said she would have liked to be an investigator for the CDC (Center for Disease Control), investigating diseases in the world. Wow, that came out of left field. My spouse said he always had a desire to be a radio personality. Wow, never expected that. Another friend said he regrets he did not give more interest and attention to some early relationship possibilities that came his way in his teens when he was discovering he was gay. He took the path of running away, basically, wondering what possibilities he may have passed up.

So, yes, it can be fun to think of the paths not chosen, possibly alternate and also good lives. It can also be redemptive and a relief, also, to realize we chose the path we chose and we avoided some wrong paths.

Wally

Need My Sabbath

The Sabbath, what a concept. A day of rest. You know, God created the heavens and the earth then rested on the seventh day (Genesis in the Hebrew Bible). For most of my life I never thought much about the concept or the commandment (the fourth of the ten commandments) to honor and observe and keep holy the sabbath day.

I remember growing up in the 1950’s as a kid and Sunday was different in society and the business world. Much of business ground to a halt on Sunday, many stores and businesses were closed. It was just the way life was. We had “blue laws” which meant a lot of business closed for the day. My spouse says he remembers when J C Penny first opened on a Sunday, he was shocked and really stunned about the change.

I had one incident in my childhood related to this sabbath concept and practice. My childhood friend and I developed a lawn mowing business in our neighborhood. One family we mowed lawns for was a Seventh Day Adventist family, so they required that we not mow their lawn on Saturday and they let us know how important honoring the correct sabbath day was to them and their religion. For the first time I started to get interested in religion and theology as I thought about what they said and preached. I did some research and realized they did have a point. They really believed honoring the sabbath was a very important factor in living a holy and good life.

One other time the sabbath commandment really hit me, right out of the blue. I was in my twenties and walking along Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood on a Saturday night (okay, yes, I was bar hopping in my “wild days”). It was a very heavily Jewish and gay area. I was approached by an orthodox Jewish man who acted very desperate to find someone to help him out. Being the kind person I am (yes, being kind and bar hopping were not a contradiction for me), I lent him my ear and he told me he was really in a conundrum. It was his sabbath and he needed to listen to his answering machine for some reason. He explained to me that he is prohibited from performing any work on the sabbath, so he asked if I would come up to his flat and play his answering machine for him. Sure, I responded. So I performed my service as a decent human being by helping someone stay true to their “sabbath.”

But, aside from that incident in my childhood and the incident on the street in West Hollywood, the serious thoughts about sabbath observance pretty much did not enter my mind much. Like I said, the blue laws were the norm back then and I didn’t think much about the sabbath or a day of rest. For most of my life I worked at my airline job on Saturdays and Sundays. The only airline employees who had weekends off had many years of seniority (decades) and days off and vacations were bid strictly on a seniority basis. Holidays and weekends were days of work in my lifestyle. Didn’t really give any thought to the sabbath commandment.

So, fast forward to today, this stage of life I’m in now, usually called “retirement.” (I’m much busier now than I ever was during my working days, but that’s another topic for another time). Now, every day’s agenda is totally up to me. I set my schedule, I create the life I want now. It took me a long time to get to this point.

So, now I am revisiting the concept of the sabbath practice and commandment. I have read some excellent books on the subject, very thought provoking. I’m not going to get into the technical aspects of what is the real sabbath as far as religions and scriptures are concerned. In my life, in my culture and society, I find I need my “day of rest,” and what works best for me is a Sunday day of rest, a real break from daily routine. No matter what the week has brought me in my life, I do need a break from daily routine and totally rest my body and soul.

Sunday is my favorite day of the week now. I really shift gears and totally take a break. I always put everything off that in any way resembles work if I can, and I usually can, unless there’s a real emergency ( remember, Jesus healed on the sabbath… got him in a lot of trouble with the religious authorities).

I usually go to church. A good church that teaches real life spiritual principles. That’s my thing. I believe even an atheist can enjoy a sabbath day, the practice will work for anybody. But for me, a little extra spiritual boost is nice, a nice addition to my daily spiritual practices.

So, that’s the way it works for me now. I have come full circle from taking a sabbath day for granted (the 1950’s and the “blue laws” in our society), to not thinking about a sabbath at all for decades and then coming to fully embrace the whole concept of a day of rest, practicing keeping the sabbath holy or the Lord’s Day as the Christians in their early history called their Sunday day of rest.

Wally

Something Better [ Post #22]

A theme that has played a part in and been a motivator in my life, in fact it has been my salvation, is the thought, the belief, the certainty that there is something better than what I am seeing before me, my present experience. I grew up being very depressed as a child and in my youth. Friends may find it hard to believe now that I have grown out of that darkness in my early life, but it is true. The internal thought that was in the back of my mind that “there has to be something better than this experience and feeling” truly was my salvation. It literally saved my life.

Somehow I survived my dark early years. I guess I always had hope of something better. I don’t know how I had that knowledge but I did. I knew in my bones, in my soul that there was a better experience awaiting me if I could just make it through the rough times. Looking back, I see now that I developed some strategies and techniques that aided my survival.

My process for breaking free from my shadow of depression and despair was leaving unpleasant situations and moving on. Now, I know a lot of people make a whole lifestyle of leaving situations and people and moving and running away, but they usually just take themselves and their internal emotional and psychological problems with them, never experiencing any real, permanent healing of their wounds or demons. Somehow, in my life, I really made forward movement and experienced true healing of my shadow side.

I experienced my early family life as very toxic and I left home as soon as I graduated from high school. I eventually put myself in a new setting, a new life, by going to college. It was not that I felt that I needed college, but I needed a new life and that seemed to be one way to find it. I healed many of my wounds by doing that. After college and a year of seminary, I left the academic world, realizing that I needed a break. I seemed to know, once again, that there was something better awaiting me if I just followed my intuition. Not long after leaving seminary I landed my job in the airline industry and began pursuing my dreams of traveling and piloting airplanes.

When my first significant relationship turned out to be a disaster I left it and moved on. I did not let it destroy me, and once again I figured that there must be something better. I did not habitually keep making bad decisions and choices and losing behaviors in my life. I made changes and moved on. If I discovered I was surrounded by toxic acquaintances and friends, I dropped them and found better relationships, just as when I left my family when I became aware they were a bad influence on me in many ways.

So, I say all this to show how, in my life, I’ve been driven by the knowledge deep inside of me that no matter how bad things may seem, there is always something better. We can always choose new thoughts, new ways of being, of behaving and relating to the world, life and people, including ourselves. We do not have to be stuck with what we think is a permanent circumstance or situation.

But it’s more than just changing the externals in our lives, running away, hoping something comes along to “save” us. We have to do a lot of internal, psychological work in the process of healing ourselves. We need to be open to forces greater than our limited, conditioned selves. Something better is always available if we open ourselves to that possibility and do the work we need to do. We have to be open, proactive, willing, courageous and sure of the fact that “something better” is awaiting our discovery.

I call that belief, that certainty, “faith.” I have used those tools to beat depression and negativity. Everyone is different and I really feel for those who cannot seem to beat their demons, to drive them out of their lives, those that always seem to live under that shadow of darkness. I am thankful that I have found tools and techniques and spiritual truths that have worked for me and lifted me to new levels of living and new life!

Wally

Doing Your Thing [ Post #21]

One part of my life “doing my thing.”

I like to look at things and life in simple terms. Yes, I know it is all very complicated, but the way I look at life, it is basically very simple. My view is that we come, we do our thing, and we leave. There’s no way around that, that’s just the way it is. It’s the “do your thing” part of my view that is so difficult, so complicated, so “messy” for most of us. But, still the basic process is that we are born, we do our life, and then we die.

So, what is our thing that we do, what do we do with our life? Some people do a lot with their life, they accomplish tremendous things and leave a mark on this world and perhaps history. Some seem to not do much, some may even spend most of their lives as homeless, discarded and forgotten people. Most of us fall somewhere in between. I find it curious why some people accomplish to much and some don’t. What makes people so different? Why the motivation, the drive in some people? Why are some people so genuinely happy and some so miserable most, if not all, of their lives? Okay, that is a big subject, a dilemma that can consume a lifetime of therapy, a subject matter that fills hundreds of books. Of course in a brief essay like this blog post, I can only give you a few of my personal thoughts and experiences regarding these matters.

I can look at my life and think, “gee, I didn’t become a great, famous person; I did not become a top surgeon or find a cure for cancer or invent a wonderful product or make my mark on the world.” So, does that mean I am a nobody or disappointment to the world, etc. etc. What is life all about, anyway? Of course, I can’t answer that question.

What I can say is that my life has been about trying to find what life is really all about in the deepest sense. It has been about my finding my way through this maze, this haze, about not letting others determine what my life should be. To not be manipulated and controlled or coerced. To be my own self, to have my own dreams and goals, to live from love, not hate.

Now, I did accomplish my dreams. I may not have accomplished the dreams others may have had for me. My family, it seems to me, had a dream of me just living a mediocre life, getting a job, sticking with it for life, and then die. (Wow, how exciting!) I rejected that limited vision and did “my” thing (which I now see as “God’s” thing for me). Doing “my” thing ( God’s thing) has made my life absolutely wonderful and perfect. I feel that it takes a lot of work to really be yourself. Everyone wants to mold you, bend you this way and that way, make you conform.

So, what about the paths not taken? Well, they were not taken, so that’s sort of the end of the subject. I know, a lot of people play the miserable game of “what if,” “if only I had done…,” “If I had it to do over…,” etc. etc. But, life goes the way it goes, as I see it. If you have faith, if you have a connection to something higher than your self and your world, as I see it, you are in the flow. The flow of Spirit, your higher self, God, your Christ Consciousness, your Buddha self, or whatever you may call it. You may not have a name that is famous is this world, but you have “done your thing.” And then, when you go, you leave this place and can feel good about yourself and not feel regretful or miserable.

I believe these are the choices we all have. We come, we do our thing, we leave. How do we handle it all? I feel I have done a good job so far, and I have not been alone on this journey. It’s not all been just me. As Jesus said, “it is the father who lives in me that does the work.” I know there’s something to that statement. I must just listen, listen to my life and let it tell me who I am and what is my thing to do.

Wally

Relationships, Marriage, Family, Life [ Post #20 ]

A friend recently asked me about my thoughts on good and bad relationships. Hmmm, I thought… me? You’re asking me? Well, since I’m going to have to think this one over in my mind, maybe I’ll just write out my thoughts and see if it’s appropriate material for my blog. Me, giving my opinion and advice on relationships, wow, as if there isn’t already a plethora of relationship “experts” in this world. Well, that’s the fun thing about blog writing, no academic degrees required to just blabber on about something.

Something that just popped into my thoughts as I considered this topic was the fact that in college I took a “Marriage and Family” psychology class and got one of my few “A’s” in college. (Overall I was probably a B and C student.) I guess I had a real interest in the subject in order to work that hard to get the top grade.

So, my thoughts on this matter of relationships. Well, from my earlier blog posts, you can see that my family life in my early years was a mix of good and bad experiences and feelings, probably like most of us. I had friendships through the years but no real, close friendship or partnership until my late twenties. I had always figured that after college and graduate school I’d get married, have a family, and be like everybody else in the world (at least in the world I saw). Boy, was I out of touch with reality!

One day during my year in seminary, I was crossing the street from my apartment to the campus and a fellow seminarian stopped to talk with me. He mentioned that he suspected that I was a latent homosexual. I was stunned, speechless. What? What’s this about? Where’s this coming from? I guess he drew that conclusion because I was not dating and showed no interest in dating. I was not like everyone else. I was not talking about things others were talking about, like one seminarian friend who was telling us about how he seduced a nun, etc. You know the kind of talk, the talk of the good ole boys. Anyway, after that brief encounter on the street and being accused of being a latent homosexual, I started thinking about it all. Maybe I was not heading towards a conventional, traditional marriage and family after all.

After seminary and starting my airline career, I did find a partner, a companion, and we lived together for nine years (late 1970’s to late 1980’s). So, through that experience, I came to learn all about bad relationships. It was bad, really bad ( from my perspective, emotionally, but, yes it could have been much worse if it was physical abuse, etc.). A total narcissist, pot-smoking, manipulating and controlling phony. And I spent nine years in that horrible relationship. I learned a lot of lessons.

What did I learn? I learned to be aware, to be very attentive to the “vibes,” the “energy” that people have and project. I learned to be aware of harsh emotional treatment and put-downs, no matter if even very subtle and often brushed off as “oh well, no big deal.” I learned if a person is not kind and loving in a real way almost all the time and understanding and compassionate, watch out. If after lashing out they are always begging for forgiveness and then repeat the same behavior ( again and again), that’s a warning sign things are not right with this person. I learned what pathological liars are. Wow, what an eye opener.

By the time I was halfway through my airline career, we had broken up and I met my second partner. By this time I had wised up a lot and had decided to make a good relationship a reality in my life if at all possible. I guess I really did believe change was possible, that we don’t always keep choosing the same people over and over again. It took a lot of work and a lot of time, but the result was a stunning success and resulted in my eventual marriage . So, I did eventually get to experience marriage and a real, good intimate relationship, even though it was not the conventional type I had imagined in my earlier years. But you know what? Relationships are relationships, love is love, and living with someone is the same whether in a conventional, traditional manner or in an unconventional one, as our world sees it.

So, good versus bad relationships. I feel I could write a book about this topic but for this blog I’ll keep it brief. I already mentioned many of the clues and signs of a bad relationship. Bad relationships often involve two people just coming together without much thought about it all, without working on changing themselves into compatible, honest, loving people, as I see it. Left as they are, they are often selfish, self-centered, impulsive, compulsive, egotistical, reactive, whiny, victim acting and possibly addictive. I know I was some of those things. I had to change if I was to have a real working relationship.

As I see it, to have a good working relationship with longevity, it takes a lot of work. It does not “just happen.” You do not just hook up. It takes an objective look at life and all our quirks and faults and negative traits and thought patterns. We have to work on ourselves. Sometimes some very deep work to extricate our demons, our dark side that is often well hidden. This can be done by ourselves, but sometimes it may require professional help, whether a therapist, counselor, spiritual worker, mentor, coach or whatever. Whatever works, I say, go for it. Do what needs to be done.

I see lots of people who have been together for many years in what they consider is a “good, loving” relationship. I look at them, think about it, and think to myself, no, I don’t quite see it that way. They often fight a lot, nag continuously ( usually not even aware they are always nagging ). They are hurtful and unkind as I observe them. I just don’t get it. A better life is available if you will just do the work required. A much better, a much more evolved relationship is possible. I know as I’ve been on both sides of the coin. I learned from the miserable times and I will never go back!

Wally

Phrases I’m Not Fond of [Post #19]

They say the words we use are important in our lives as far as determining how we think and live. I think there’s truth in that statement. Thinking this over brought to mind several phrases I really don’t much care for, in fact I think they can really be bad for us in how they affect our day-to-day lives. I’m not really talking about the vulgar or cuss words we use from time to time (or that some people overuse a lot), I’m referring to the often everyday, casual phrases we spew out of our mouths without really thinking what we are saying.

Let’s start with some of my least favorite phrases. There are three very similar phrases that I think are not the best way to express the thought that something may not need to be done right now, today. “There’s always tomorrow”; “You have all the time in the world”; “There’s always next time” ; Opportunity will always come knocking again!”

Well, if you’ve ever had a loved one die suddenly ( and I’ve had several) you know these statements are not always accurate or true. There is not always tomorrow, or another opportunity, or all the time in the world. The day will come when it is all over. The only time we really ever have is now. Always has been that way, always will be that way. There is only now. When people say “there’s always tomorrow,” I’m thinking, well, yes, if I don’t die tonight!

How about, “don’t get your hopes up!” Wow, that’s a real killer of hope, anticipation and enthusiasm; a punch in the gut. People say that so nonchalantly and sometimes they mean well, but I think that is not the right phrase to use. I think it is good to get your hopes up, but also, be realistic about things and be open to the results being different than originally planned. Remember, as they say. “God’s ways are not our ways.” I do believe that!

And there’s the “I’d rather die than…” (fill in the blanks). I don’t think that’s a good way to state a dislike. I don’t like putting that thought into my mind and consciousness. Now, I am more tolerant of casual phrases we use like, “you kill me!”, or “that just kills me.” Somehow those expressions don’t seem as dangerous to my mind as the others. “I would just die if…”, well, maybe I would consider that one borderline, not the best but commonly used. There must be a better way to express that sentiment, I think.

Often when we have a loss of a loved one (a death), we hear all sorts of things that may not be the best things to say. The grief experts usually say that it is best to say nothing or very little to a grieving person than to just blurt out stupid and hurtful things which are often done in that situation. What is often heard are things like “I know exactly what you are going through”, “It’s not that bad”, “they’re in a better place”, you’ll get over this”, “time heals all wounds”, etc. Just not really good things to say, as I see it. Time alone does not heal wounds. Time and a lot of work on grieving and the healing process can alleviate the initial trauma, but many people would testify that it’s not really a healing so much as getting through the process and living with a new life we must adjust to.

It is sometimes not appropriate to tell people to not get angry. To tell them not to feel that way (however they feel). We have to allow people to have their feelings and reactions. Who are we to tell people how to feel? Now of course there are dangerous situations where we may have to assert ourselves, but those are very rare, I feel. Someone planning a mass murder should be stopped, of course. Maybe I’m just more sensitive to the words and phrases we carelessly throw around because of my history. I worked in customer service in the airline industry and often had confrontations and unpleasant situations. My first companion and I had a tumultuous relationship and harsh words and actions were the norm for us.

So, maybe as you see it, it’s no big deal the way we talk to each other. To me it is! It’s very important how we express things in our interactions with each other. In my early life I was often very depressed and I believe that was often because of how I thought, my thinking process and the words I used. So, maybe this position of mine is just the result of living a long life and having lots of experiences. I just know that I try to use the best expressions and carefully watch what I say as much as I can. Of course I’m not perfect. I’m just a work in progress, aren’t we all!

Wally

The Loves of My Life [ Post #18]

Sorry to disappoint you, but no, this is not going to be a sleazy tell-all of my intimate love life. We’ll let that come out when I get into politics. No, what I’m thinking about here is the real loves we all have which form our lives and give us purpose and meaning on our journey on this earth. We all have different lives and the loves we develop are what motivate us and give us enthusiasm and energy and fulfillment. I’m always interested is what drives people to be who they are.

Exploring my loves, one of the earliest loves I developed in life was my love of the mountains. My family had a cabin in the local mountains and we would often spend weekends there. We would just chill out and enjoy the mountain air and go swimming and boating and even fishing in a nearby lake. My parents were in a club at the lake that always had activities going on. It was a great time! I absolutely loved the time there. Being in a family I was not always happy with, it was a transformation for us. We all got along together and just had a blissful experience. That was a love in my formative years that has stayed with me to this day. I still get up to the mountains when I can and anyone who has gone with us or visited us there knows how Terry and I love the time up there.

In a previous blog post (#3), I wrote about how I spontaneously developed my love of aviation when I took my first airplane trip with my parents around age five or six. That wasn’t just an interest, it was an instant love. I may not have realized my first dream at the time of becoming an airline pilot, but I did become a flight instructor and a commercial pilot working at a local airport as a side job to my airline job. I did accomplish my dreams and am thrilled I did push myself to get my pilot licenses. Otherwise today I would have deep regret that I never did that. Mission accomplished!

Along with my love of aviation I also developed a love of travel (there is a relationship there, you see). As a kid I did a couple of trips with my parents and that inspired an interest is seeing the big, big world out there someday. So, of course, when I got hired on with an international airline, that dream and love germinated in a big way. I traveled the world, literally (my fist airline pass was a trip around the world, blog #6). I traveled all the time. Again, I’m so glad I did as I am not as enthused in traveling that much these days with crowded airplanes and all the rest that has changed over the years. So, my love of travel got satisfied to the hilt.

In my youth, another interest that became a love was photography. Somehow, I just loved taking good pictures and I was so into it that I turned my bedroom closet into a (very cramped) darkroom. Yes, those were the days before digital photography. The only way to take pictures was to use film. I loved the whole process of pictures taking and developing the film at home. In fact, in high school I took photography class and got accolades from my teacher, he loved my picture taking ability and talent. I felt very good about all of that. A love fulfilled once again.

Turning a little more intellectual, now, I must admit another love, that of reading and being curious of my great big mysterious world. As a kid I somehow joined a book club for kids with books titled, “All About….” All About Nature, All About Science, All About the Cosmos, All About Photography, Aviation, Etc. You get the idea. Those books arriving every month or two sparked my curiosity about everything and that curiosity and love of reading has stayed with me. Another true love in my life.

Related to this love of reading and curiosity was my life-long love of religion and spirituality (even during those few years of my atheism (blog#7). Ever since my “born again, come to Jesus” experience as a teenager I have loved studying the world beyond this world, the religious and spiritual world. And yes, I know all about the horrible part of that “religious” world. I majored in history in college, so I know what has been done in the name of God and religion. But we all have a connection to life and the eternal that fascinates me. A mystery we’ll never comprehend, I’m sure. After all, I did go to seminary and studied deeper religion and theology. Once again, I’m glad I did all of this and I have no regrets about following my love to see where it led.

The last love I want to look at in this blog is my love of good relationships. I truly love deep, sincere, real relationships. I have friendships that have lasted over fifty years. I treasure those true relationships. I have no time or energy or interest in flaky relationships. God knows I’ve had a few in my lifetime, what a waste (although lessons have always been learned in those relationships also; I always believe there are lessons to be learned in all that happens in our lives).

So, my love of good relationships has culminated in my marriage now with the love of my life. It took everything that happened to get me here to this place of true happiness and bliss. Whether others understand my marriage or not is not my concern or business. It is the best part of this long life and the trials and struggles encountered along the way. My belief has proven true for me, at least, that in the end, it all works out!

Wally