Admittedly, I have been a bit underwhelmed and uninspired of late… a bit ho hum. On the eve of the 364th day of my year, I find myself in some heavy, deep reflection.
Rut Ro.
Isn’t that what birthdays are supposed to do? Pause, reflect, embrace, and saddle up for the coming year.
So here I sit, thinking about the how, the when and the why of my countless experiences. Specifically, the one’s through which I managed to persevere. I don’t remember making a conscious choice to persevere, rather, I embraced the characteristics of one who chose the opposite of conceding defeat.
There is great discomfort in the swamp, only matched by the discomfort of trudging through it. I guess my underlying hope is/was I will eventually make my way out of it.
The problem is, you don’t know you will come out the other side, until you have arrived on the other side!
I am fortunate to have had worthy examples of such a trek in my life, but as observations rather than teachings. My Hungarian grand parents exemplified the extremely consequential necessity of NOT conceding defeat at levels that make my challenges seem like a walk through the rose garden, merely dodging thorns.
Their unwavering, resilient determination gave me my life. That is a heavy load.
Reflection is a powerful tool and my perspective is rooted in it.
It is a subjective process that includes a dash of rationalization. I would rather rationalize my way through the swamp than drowned in it. Writing has given me that pause. The time necessary to slow my roll, reflect, process, push on through, and eventually find gratitude in all things past and present.
As I have said many times, I am where I am because of where I have been. The good, the bad and everything in between. Water under the bridge is water under the bridge! I can’t push it back up stream and make it come down differently.
Embrace it and move on!
If that makes a bad thing not so bad, or something I expected, exceptional, I’ll take that every day!
Persevering is the strongest of P’s in my Pod. With a lifetime of experience behind me it’s easy to reflect on its significant impact in my life’s direction and outcomes. The fortitude, determination and will to endure has served me well.
Today’s swamp is in the distance, potentially avoidable if I navigate the appropriate detour. As they say, with age comes wisdom. Having made a life time of mistakes has sharpened my ability to avoid a wrong turn in my future.
Fortunately, my hardships are in the rearview mirror resting neatly amongst the other shiny tools in the back seat. I know there is potential to be neck deep in the swamp, gasping for each breath before I’m sucked in by the muck.
I am hopeful the tools I have employed effectively in the past will encourage balance and harmony and enable peace. And steer me clear of the muck. It is a more difficult equation when I can’t control the outcome of something so I try to focus on the things I can control.
Persevering through difficult circumstances has served me well. That persistence points me in the right direction and invariably leads me right to the light at the end of the tunnel.
As a kid, I lived knee deep in consequences. There were many but most resulted from defying the seemingly, menial orders-from-headquarters tasks that ran along a constant theme of being lazy around the house chores I loathed.
Need I list them?
Exactly. I travel in good company.
There was no ‘upside’ to complying, it pretty much sucked if I did the chores or didn’t. School felt similarly blah. My grades were average, and even when they were above average, I didn’t connect my ability, or lack of, with a sense of controlling my outcome. It felt more like a means to an end.
Not until I got involved in high school athletics could I emotionally and physically connect responsibility with the outcome of my actions. If I hit a jump shot at the buzzer, I would reel in glory for days and if I missed a gate and DQ’d in an important race, I sulked and moped.
Since my life did not resemble a basketball game nor ski race, responsibility and accountability eluded my internal compass. I didn’t blame others for my plight, rather excused myself from the responsibility of those outcomes.
That attitude moved right to college with me. As you might imagine, it was not the winning combination an aspiring college grad needed. If not for the academic probation I had to endure after my first semester freshman year, I might have coasted into mediocrity indefinitely. Since I associated ‘probation’ with criminals, I needed to get out of jail pronto!
Cracking down on the books is subjective, right? Not if you’re on probation! It meant mirroring things that the smarty pants did like visit the library, study, complete homework, attend class, pay attention in class, and regularly consult my student advisor.
All things I should have done from the beginning.
It meant discipline, focus, determination, accountability, and responsibility. It meant owning my outcomes and taking proactive steps toward improving them. It also meant fewer than the 16 credit hours I had saddled during the semester of my academic fiasco. Twelve credits became the magic number.
If you’re a math whiz, you quickly determined that path would not lead to graduation in the 4 years I hoped.
No offense to 5th year seniors but sitting through third grade twice lit a fire under my academic ass enabling me to successfully manage back to back semesters @ 20 credit hours. Yep, that’s 40 credits in my senior year. The equivalent to 3.3 semesters at my previous pace.
I got the shit done. I took responsibility and found accountability. If not for the consequence of my mediocre actions, I would not have found the value, gratitude and inspiration in taking responsibility for my poor results and changing course for better outcomes.
Those failures single-handedly empowered my path and solidified the ownership of my actions. They are 2 badges that I wear with pride. Despite both, I prevailed.
Profound lessons for my future self as I realized personal responsibility and accountability don’t abolish bad choices or poor outcomes, they simply remove blame and excuses from the equation. If I trip and fall, I spring back to my feet faster than I fell.
Today, my critical thinking skills are stronger than ever, and I methodically avoid negative consequential actions. If they result despite my proactive efforts, I take responsibility, reflect on where I could have done better, then press on full steam ahead.
As the head chef of my household, the primary objective with all of my culinary creations is volume. How many days can one tolerate the same meal? And/or, can I freeze it for a future delight?
Check and check!
During the summer months, those meals generally incorporate the grill, but during the winter months it means homemade soups and sauces. Naturally, all the good stuff ends up at the bottom, so my instructions are pretty clear.
Stir from the bottom!
This has become such a joke in my family that I now have a cup memorializing my sage advice.
Over time it occurred to me, this is a great metaphor for how I find love and gratitude. I stir from the bottom.
For me, love is a very broad word. At the top of the list is how you emotionally and physically feel when you share love with a partner, spouse, child, and others. For now, I am leaving that aside.
The love I am talking about comes from giving or receiving appreciation, respect, kindness, excitement, friendship, and warmth. All things that rise to the top.
It is within the contentment derived from those feelings where I find the warmth of love.
Feeling the love in those times dishes up a huge helping of gratitude because they connect to each other. Just like an amazing appetizer is the start to a great meal. When love resonates with such ease, gratitude is a natural reaction.
When I was a kid, I heard I needed to count my blessings because there are others less fortunate. My childhood was not structured around religious conformity, so I didn’t fully grasp the intention of that until much later in life when I connected blessings to love and gratitude. (This is my personal experience and in no way a disregard to religious conformity nor the religious meaning of blessings.)
Embracing and connecting them as true feelings took a lot of time and maturity.
What if all the good stuff is at the bottom?
Can we find love and gratitude in despair or heartache?
Back in the days of my life when I often threw myself a self-imposed pity-party, I couldn’t find either. My backward way was so convoluted, that I would sit in troubled agony for days until my friends asked me the precise proper question. Not until then, could I unload my burden.
When they proclaimed, ‘Why didn’t you tell me sooner?’ My reply was always the same, ‘You didn’t ask.’
Fortunately, I haven’t thrown myself a pity-party in decades.
I outgrew that egregious behavior in my late 30’s and today, my overly sunny disposition finds something to love in everything, even when I must stir from the bottom.
If I stir from the bottom, even the smallest spec of light at the end of a long tunnel consumed by darkness can change my perspective. I have faced and endured hardships but if I focus on the spec of light rather than be consumed by the darkness, eventually I emerge to find myself in the light.
Love and gratitude don’t take away the hardships that indelibly exist, rather they provide a different lens through which to view them.
I have rationalized many things in my life to overcome the darkness. In the end the facts remain the facts, it is my perception of them that changes. In those times, the spec of light becomes a beautiful ray of sunshine.
Next time you make a gallon sized pot of chili or spaghetti sauce, be sure to give me a nod when you stir from the bottom.
If that was the measured duration of time it takes for a car to reach a top speed, your vehicle would be an obsolete pile of rusted dust sitting in a junk yard.
Fortunately, with all the ‘Cares,’ carelessly, carefreely and carefully covered, I’ve managed to avoid rusting in a junk yard.
In 60 years, there are nearly 2 billion seconds, 31,556,926 minutes, 525,960 hours, and 21,915 days for which to have cared.
That’s a lot of frickin time.
Generally, birthdays have never really been a big thing for me. I don’t like being the center of attention.
Ironic, isn’t it?
As I lap the sun for the 60th time it seems surreal to reflect on the years of passed time. I have often said to my friends with kids, their children are the barometer of their own age since they can see and feel their age through their kids’ age.
Kid-less, my life feels like, Holy shit, how did I get here so fast?
Let’s see, shall we?
Random facts in 6 decades of life:
I’ve lived in 3 countries, 14 different cities with 20 addresses, 7 were in Chicago.
I attended 10 different schools – K through College, 7 preceded high school.
I spent 2 years as a 3rd grader.
I took 40 credit hours my senior year of college to avoid being a 5th year senior.
I’ve had 13 jobs and 2 careers.
I’ve loved 7 dogs, 2 parakeets and a bowl full of gold fish.
After driving the infamous ‘Blaze’ in high school, I’ve owned 4 Chevy Blazers.
Knowing the location of bathrooms in every place I shop.
Hearing my mother’s tone and pitch in my voice.
Getting married.
Not giving a shit.
Loving asparagus.
Wrinkles.
The dreaded colonoscopy.
Blood pressure medication.
Plucking rouge hairs from my chin.
Plucking rouge hairs from my nose that seem to be growing to my chin.
Not feeling the need to bathe every day.
Feeling relaxed and slightly more patient.
Being publicly vulnerable.
Doing a cartwheel on the beach on my birthday!
Writing this blog!
In the nearly 2 billion seconds that I’ve breathed air on this plant, I am grateful to all who have shared in my 60 laps around the sun. I am where I am because of where I’ve been and with whom I have been there. All in!
Every second has influenced and guided me to this precise place. Foibles and all, this path was the intended journey.
Time to lay more bricks. Ready or not, here I come.
I learned in my adult life that I am a literal-visual thinker. It wasn’t until I googled the words that it quickly popped up in the pre-filled field. It lead me to a blog post that read as if it were describing me. Not until then did I know it was a real thing or that others struggled with it too.
Literal-visual thinkers process what is said based on the exact meaning of each word and then see it in pictures.
What?!?
Others don’t?
As a literal-visual thinker, I can’t hear ‘I want to blow my brains out,’ without seeing brain spatter everywhere. I shudder every time and need minutes to recover. There are times when I anticipate what’s coming and close my eyes and cover my ears to avert the suffering.
If there is a scale, I fall in the 80-85% range. Not because I’m not always 100% literal, rather I have adjusted to repeated idioms, metaphors, humor, vagueness and have learned to recognize the nuances. I was surprised to learn literal thinking is associated with Autism or Asperger’s and exists on the spectrum.
I have never been more conscious of my literalness than when I am in the company of the masses who are ‘literally dying’ all around me, but rather, are very much alive and well.
We are drowning in ‘literallys.’ They lurk in the most unsuspecting sentences from the most unsuspecting sources.
Let us imagine for a moment, that the next time you say ‘literally’ to emphasize a figurative statement or even a fact, you get slapped in the face as an odd reflex perpetrated from your own hand, then perhaps you might cease with this nonsense.
Can’t you see Molly Shannon and Kate McKinnon in a SNL skit catching up over coffee and slapping themselves every time they say ‘literally?’
Curiously hilarious, I say!
In the seas of today’s language environment, you can’t enjoy a random conversation with family and friends or turn on the TV without hearing its annoying chronic misuse. It makes me shudder every time!
“It was literally 80 yesterday and today it’s 30.”
“That house was literally there a few hours ago and now it is literally gone.”
Those are two very clear and distinct facts that need not be re-emphasized as fact. Like ‘ums’ and ‘likes’ ‘literally’ has become a filler word.
Even more egregious is using it out of context. If you were ‘literally dying’ you would be gasping for your last breath! It is a distressing and tiresome reminder of the real struggles we literal thinkers face.
The inadvertent agony created by the non-literal masses coughing up ‘literally’ everywhere is a fate worse than the high-pitched screech of metal on metal. It’s akin to constantly reminding an empath that they are being overly sensitive.
Duh…
Partly sunny or mostly cloudy?!
Are not they the same? I get why water under the bridge is an important metaphor. We can’t push it back upstream to make it come down differently. Or why a glass half full is better than one half empty even though from a volume standpoint they are the same.
I process information from long drawn-out stories of mundaneness to analytical equations in the same manner. I connect dots and put things in order. It must be clear and sensical. It must lack implied details, inuendo and nuance.
Throw in a half dozen or so ‘literallys’ and I stop listening and start counting.
Tell me a joke? I get painfully uncomfortable whilst mustering a fake laugh or an eye roll. Say something that isn’t true because it is funny. I wince and cringe in agony. Present a ‘hypothetical’ and I begin spiraling in confusion.
“Wait, so you did tell your boss to fuck off or you didn’t.”
I am painfully gullible.
Clarity, please. It is the only path I know.
There are endless examples. Fortunately, most fly under the radar and go unnoticed by those around me, especially if we don’t share the same roof. However, the more daily interactions I have with someone the harder it gets.
My mother recently had a malignant growth removed from the shin of her leg. The directions from the Doctor required her to clean it with bar soap once a day, Ivory, Dial, it didn’t matter.
Of course, I asked.
The next morning, “Mom, did it bother you to clean it?”
“No, I rubbed a bar of soap on it.” Gesturing with her hand toward her shin for added effect.
“Did that hurt? Maybe you shouldn’t rub a bar of soap over it and use a washcloth.”
Her innocent reply, “I didn’t! I used a washcloth! What do you think I am, stupid!?”
Concern and compassion with a dash of literal interpretation is a recipe perfectly formulated to look like an A-hole. Sadly, a place I find myself inadvertently landing too often.
Them, “I don’t like that restaurant, I don’t eat fried food.”
Me, “They don’t serve fried food.”
Them, “Well you know, when they sauté it in a pan.”
“That’s not fried food.” Me = A-hole.
You get the A-(w)hole idea.
My responses are not premeditated for A-hole conformity, but rather to my natural interpretation to the very statements being made. Like a train speeding down the track, I don’t see it coming until after it flattens me on the ground.
Fortunately, not all my literalness flattens me on the tracks. Years ago, I was on a plane headed to the islands for vacation and read an article in the airline magazine about the entrepreneur who developed the Big Ass Fan.
A bold ass name, I thought.
When we landed, the open-air airport had no A/C and I looked up and there it was… the biggest fan I had ever seen – A BIG ASS FAN. Thank you for living up to my literal expectations!
I am a planner and a doer, pragmatic and focused. Committed and loyal through the cloudiest of ends. Visually, it’s black and white, not gray. I see you standing over your boss’s desk telling her to fuck off. I contrive visual images of conversation details and when I can’t connect the dots, I interrupt with questions.
This annoys people. Some more than others.
The unaware may never skip a beat, on with the next anecdote of their tale, while others are clearly annoyed. As we near ‘The End’ if I don’t get it, I just can’t let it go. “Huh, what? I don’t understand.” Back to chapter one, we go.
I remember everything and expect that what is said is what will result. Say what you mean and mean what you say and don’t ask me a question you really prefer I don’t answer. I am painfully direct and frank. I call it like I see it. To the point, no mincing words.
This annoys people too. Some more than others.
People who are close to me expect and appreciate this from me. No sugar coating, just a big bitter pill to swallow with no water to wash it down.
Cough, cough… ok.
To the outsider, I imagine this reads like a demanding bitch who isn’t worthy of friends and conversation. If that’s your thought, we agree.
If you are literal like me, painstakingly connecting dots, visualizing stories with images, responding directly and frankly, it can be a distressing way to live, often being misunderstood. I am quite the opposite of a demanding bitch, and struggle with the consequences of my literalness regularly.
Fully understanding this about my nature gives me clarity and a better understanding of my communication style but doesn’t necessarily help those around me.
Sadly, being misunderstood is a literal thinker’s way of life and being reminded of it regularly is excruciating.
Thank you
Why should you care, and how might you help, you ask?
Next time you are ‘literally dying’ or need to say literally five times in each sentence, first, make sure you don’t slap yourself in the face, then pause for some brief reflection and recognize the inadvertent agony you may be causing us literal thinkers. It just might curtail your flagrant behavior.
