Flirting with Regret

120 Marbles

Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh. 

Henry David Thoreau

    Last night’s dream took me to the small prairie city where I lived with my ex-husband.  We were together in my dream, surrounded by his close-knit clan.  I woke up this morning feeling regret. I don’t regret our parting of ways, but I do regret not being able to be happy in the relationship, not being able to make him happy.  My dream reminded me how safe I felt with him. When we parted, it was a bit scary - like the ship leaving the safe harbor. 
    Shortly after we divorced, I re-united with Ex-man (about ten years after we had been together in high school).  We loved each other but our relationship had a darker side.  He would retreat, I would pursue. It was a chicken or the egg dance: somehow I thought if I pushed hard enough, I could make him take me in but the more I pushed, the more distant he became. I became so angry at his emotional distance that eventually I sought counseling and anger management (clearly, this didn't help the dynamic).  Thankfully, that was many years ago but if I knew then what I know now, I would have given him his distance, not taken it so personally, and waited till he came to me.  
    In hindsight, the relationship was about unpacking what was in my deepest, darkest closets.  There’s a preschool song, “It’s cleanup time, cleanup time, everybody cleanup time.” My relationship with Ex-man was like psychic clean up time. I had a teacher who used to say, “You only do the hard work, the heavy lifting, when there’s lots of love.”  By those standards, Ex-man and I loved each other a lot – it just didn’t always feel like love. 
    My dream last night put me right back to the simpler days of being married into the cocoon of my ex-husband’s family.  When I awoke, I was filled with nostalgia – the bittersweet longing for things of the past.  This is not to say that I want my ex-husband back – he was not for me and  I am grateful to see him happily married.  My longing is more about the lost feeling I had with my ex-husband: the feeling of being taken in by another person; the feeling that someone’s got my back; and the feeling that I’m not on my own.   
    Yep, I know that this whole journey has probably been leading toward feeling safe at my core and not relying on anyone else for my sense of security, but hey, I can wish that the waters could have been a little calmer, can’t I? 

    I become aware that I'm resisting regret.  Regret is defined as, "1. A sense of loss and longing for someone or something gone. 2. A feeling of disappointment or distress about something that one wishes could be different." That's exactly what I'm feeling about my ex-husband but regret goes against my belief that every choice I've made has brought me to where I am therefore no choice should be judged as a mistake.  Nonetheless, regret is knocking so I decide to let it in, just to see what happens. 
    As I lay in bed, awash in my feeling of nostalgia and regret, I asked, “Hey subconscious - why the dreams?  Can’t I just be in the present without having to go back and feel the loss of what’s gone before?”
    The answer came quick as lightning, “Make peace with where you’ve been before and then you will be truly present.” 
    Huh?  I thought about it for a few minutes and realized that to make peace, I have to forgive myself.  Forgive myself for leaving a warm, loving relationship.  Then I remembered hearing a fitting definition of forgiveness, “Forgiveness is letting go of the hope that things could have been any different.”
    When I sit in this forgiveness, my regret drains and I know that I couldn’t have made different choices. I’m exactly where I need to be.  

Breakups can be a fertile garden of regret: wishing that you never chose him/her; wishing that you tried harder; wishing you hadn't ignored that niggling intuition; wishing that you'd left earlier; wishing that you hadn't left - just to name a few. The question is: How can you make peace with the past so you can be present in the now?  And, is there something regret can teach you? (Hint: the answer's not to never love again.) 

Nora Ephron wrote in Heartburn, "And then the dreams break into a million tiny pieces. The dream dies. Which leaves you with a choice: you can settle for reality, or you can go off, like a fool, and dream another dream". 

What is your new dream? 

Ego Boost

121 Marbles

    I went with my running partner to an Elton John ballet last night.  As I was curling my hair and putting my make-up on, I realized how long it had been since I went out and had fun.  It seems it’s all been work, work, work lately, but last night I was going to enjoy myself.  I got dressed up in a newish coat, dress, and shoes and when I looked in the mirror I thought, “Hey, you clean up pretty well.”
    I met my friend at the theater and when we went inside, he said me, “Girl, you are turning heads tonight.”  “Thanks” I replied (cost of outfit - $50 at a consignment sale).  
    The ballet was fabulous.  I love Elton John so to see a whole ballet inspired by his life and work was amazing  Someone Saved My Life Tonight had the winged principal attached to a rope, struggling to loosen himself. You nearly had me roped and tied.  "What ropes hold me back from flying?", I wondered.  You’re a butterfly, and butterflies are free to fly. 
    This morning as I poured myself a tea, I was thinking about what an enjoyable night I had last night.  It felt good to get out and have an ego boost but as I came down from the high, I realized that my time of turning heads is drawing to a close.  Soon, my lovely daughter will start turning heads and this is how it should be.  I thought of how I automatically thought that it was the outfit that was turning heads and not me.  As I was thinking all these thoughts, I read the message on my tea bag, “Your beauty is in your spirit.”
    Touché, Yogi Tea, touché.

Where does your beauty reside?  In your clothes? In your smile? Or inside?

Perfection

122 Marbles 

We’re not meant to be perfect.  We’re meant to be whole.  

Jane Fonda

    I know a woman who uses the refrain “Perfect” a lot - too much, I think.  And while she lives in a perfect house in a perfect neighborhood, has a perfect job and two perfect kids (who never fight, by the way), I wonder about her attachment to perfection.  When you go to her house, it’s like Martha Stewart waved her magic wand and bibbedy, bobbedy, booed it until everything found a perfect spot.  The woman doesn’t even have clutter and I sometimes wonder how much energy it takes to live in her display-type home?  How much energy does it take to constantly clean and categorize the mess that life and living creates?
    I’m not a slob but if you come to my home at any time you’ll find it tidy but with several things out of place - a sweater not put away here, a pencil on the kitchen floor there, a book or a few scattered about - all things that make the house lived in (and let’s face it - kids are the worst roommates on the planet, God love them).  I enjoy doing a thorough clean every once and awhile but then I also allow the unraveling effect of watching the house get that relaxed-fit look of a pair of favorite jeans. 
    The city I live in has also been bitten by the perfect bug (as mentioned in yesterday’s marble).  In almost every neighborhood, ma and pa businesses are being taken over by perfect store fronts and specialty shops.  Although I enjoy it when someone takes their passion to the level of art, I sometimes enjoy the mayhem of the less-then-perfect spots.  The restaurant where I work has character from its beautiful heritage building.  But it has fruit flies in the summer, a washroom that seems less than first world standards, and it’s too cold in the winter from all the single-paned glass windows.  There are also numerous problems that I don’t care to mention but, it feels lived in, it has soul. It’s also a dying breed of restaurants being taken over by corporate shops with multi-million dollar, award-winning, luxury loos http://www.cactusclubcafe.com/2010/09/canadas-best-restroom-results-announced/..
        There are many definitions for perfect including “proficient”  and “lacking nothing essential to the whole.” The definition that I’m targeting is closer to the energy behind “without defect or blemish.”  As women, we’re bombarded with ideals of creating the perfect eyelashes, the perfect lips, even the perfect eyebrow (who knew there was a perfect eyebrow shape?)  I wonder how much of the perfection-pushing sacrifices wholeness?  As Jane Fonda points out, we’re not perfect but we are whole.  

       I share this history with Fonda, I was once in search of the perfect body through exercise and eating disorders but you can never be “too skinny or too rich”  (or too perfect).  It was a losing battle.  As I’ve aged I’ve discovered that even with my imperfections I lack nothing essential to my wholeness.  In my ex-husband’s words to me (from the best exit-interview ever), “You will be okay when you realize that there’s nothing wrong with you.”
       Then I remember those fun moments like when my running buddy and I tried to make a Martha Stewart-like gingerbread house with my kids. The icing was too runny and the house was askew and the candies drained from the gutters. We laughed so much and got so high on sugar that the flunkie house was nothing but perfect.

Do you strive for perfection?  Is it ever attainable? In The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz wrote, “Always Do Your Best. Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.” What if you switched to always trying to do your best, knowing that your best is constantly in flux? Does that feel less heavy? 
A couple of helpful perfection quotes by Brene Brown:
“Healthy striving is self-focused: "How can I improve", Perfectionism is other-focused:"What will they think”
“Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.” 

Too Many Choices?

123 Marbles 
It’s just been accepted that since choice is good, more choice is better, but…this perfectly reasonable assumption turns out to be false.
Barry Schwartz

     I was having a conversation with my niece last week about life for my mother’s generation of women.  In my mother’s day, you got married, had children, and never, ever got divorced (even if you hadn’t made the best choice of partners).  My mother is forty-three years older than I am and the world that she lived in varies drastically from my world and one of the reasons is the variety of choices available to women now.  We can choose: which career we’d like (she could be a nurse or a teacher - she chose the latter); to get married or not; have children or not; the list goes on, and on, and on. 
      When I was talking with my niece, I was expressing a certain dissatisfaction with all the choices, a longing to go back to when times were simpler.  I said, “Sometimes I just think it would be better if we had less…” (I couldn’t even finish the sentence because I knew it would be going against all the hard work of Gloria Steinem et al.).  My niece looked at me as if I was crazy.  After all, let’s take an example pertinent to 365 Marbles - would I choose to go back to Ex-man? No, but the option to not be with him (the almost too readily available back door) made this other choice irrelevant - the choice to be happy wherever I am.  After all, in Shakespeare’s words, “There’s nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”  (Is this really true for relationships? But that may be the query of an entirely different marble.)
      Sometimes I wonder what women felt like when corsets were abolished.  During World War I, women were discouraged from buying corsets and apparently, the metal saved was enough to build two battleships.  As the corset declined in popularity, I wonder how many women breathed a sigh of relief (literally) and how many preferred the structure provided by the corset?  My mother lived in a corseted reality (okay, by then it was a girdled reality but you get my point). How much of my own dissatisfaction is because of too many choices?
      I’ve heard of an ideology called Access Consciousness that professes living in “ten-second increments” making new choices every ten seconds.  The practice seems to take the pressure off of making choices as you’re never stuck with an outcome - if you don’t like it, choose again.  The idea is that awareness is the result of a choice, not the prerequisite for making a choice.  I think that’s where I get jammed up - trying to look at how decisions will affect different areas of my life and getting overwhelmed. The result can be the paralyzing stagnation of feeling the gravity of every choice.  As philosopher Henri- Frédéric Amiel wrote, "The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret."
      This week I found a TEDtalks segment by Barry Shwartz entitled, “The Paradox of Choice” (http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html).  His talk perfectly mirrored the sentiments I was feeling while talking with my niece and I found that the paradox of choice is not just a female condition but a human condition. He says, “The most important thing is to learn that good enough is almost always good enough; you don't need to find the best. You'll be happier if, once you find something that meets your standards, you stop looking and don't worry about it.”
      I wonder how the paradox of choice collides with the desire for perfection?  I live in a city bitten by the “perfect bug” - where even the once commonplace doughnut is taken to an art form (can you imagine an Earl Grey doughnut? - If you can’t, check out Cartems http://cartems.com/ - they’re amazingly delicious and I don’t even like doughnuts).  With so many options to choose from, how can I be assured that I’m choosing the right one?  But maybe it’s as Barry Schwartz noted, “The secret to happiness is low expectations.”

Eeyore seemed to have low expectations but was he happy?  Do you flourish in an environment ripe with choices?  Do you become easily overwhelmed?  What role does instinct play when you’re faced with myriad choices?  Do you rely more on rational thought? 

Investing in Yourself

124 Marbles
Develop your own compass, and trust it.  Take risks, dare to fail, remember the first person through the wall always gets hurt.
Aaron Sorkin

    “Follow your Bliss” is the famous phrase coined by mythologist, Joseph Campbell and there are many who share a similar philosophy that happiness is achieved by following our unique passions. John D. Rockefeller III pragmatically claimed, “The road to happiness lies in two simple principles: find what it is that interests you and that you can do well, and when you find it put your whole soul into it-every bit of energy and ambition and natural ability you have.” Playwright Henrik Ibsen said, “Different people have different duties assigned to them by Nature; Nature has given one the power or the desire to do this, the other that. Each bird must sing with his own throat.” Similarly, Einstein claimed, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” The trick is finding the arena where you are a genius and developing your talent by investing in yourself. 
    To invest means to commit (money, capital, energy) in order to gain a financial return.  It also can be defined as spending for future advantage or benefit. Investing in yourself means spending money or energy now for future advantage or financial return. Sometimes investing in yourself looks like taking a course or a program in an area of interest.  Sometimes investing in yourself looks like taking the time to exercise and keep your body healthy.  For my mother, investing in herself looked like going on a retreat once a year to be by herself, away from her family so she could hear herself think and come back more centered.  Investing in myself right now looks like considering the highly impractical idea of heading down to New Orleans to do some research for my script and sponge up the setting. 
    The trick with being a parent is balancing the investment in myself with the investment in my kids.  When I calculate the money I’d spend on an excursion down south, I think of all the things that money could mean to my kids - new clothes, classes, etc.  But I have this belief that if I invest in myself, it will turn out better for them in the long run.  It’s all part of developing my compass, trusting it, and taking risks. Yikes!
   
One of the first female journalists, Shana Alexander, wrote, “Men of our generation are invested in what they do, women in what we are.” What would it take to invest what we are into what we do?