You never can tell. About anything, really. Don’t you think life is mostly a matter of random encounters and chances?
Which is a rather odd introduction to a little story of laughter and embarrassment during a time of high stress...
Last Tuesday evening I was attending the monthly meeting of the Board of Trustees of my college. I was there because one of the programs within my area of responsibility was going to be eliminated by action of the Board.
It was all high drama. People wanted to have a say in the decision...and many signed up to offer their personal testimony. Although the action item had originally been placed toward the end of the agenda, it was moved up to the beginning so the Board could take its vote while interested members of the public were still in attendance. The testimony and ensuing discussion took almost three full hours.
I was sitting in the back of the room. The furniture in the peanut-gallery section is notoriously uncomfortable, so I had arrived early to get a chair (and a location) that would suit me best. As the meeting got going, more and more people filled the room until it was a standing-room-only situation.
Ultimately, two young women were standing very close to me. I was very conscious of how tightly we were all packed in, and the high likelihood of encroaching on someone else’s personal space. The room started to get warmer and warmer, but the temperature was just right for me as I was sitting next to a very large (but closed) window – which kept cool the air in my region of the room.
At one point, as one of the speakers was just finishing up, another of the audience members came over to me and wanted to see if the window by me would open. I resisted, saying (quietly), “yes, but even if it does open, I’ll freeze.”
The very attractive (approximately 20-year-old) coed standing right next to me, who had not acknowledged me during the entire proceeding thus far, jumped right in. She put her hand on my shoulder and said (or, more accurately, announced) , “oh, don’t worry, I’ll keep you warm.”
I snorted. Giggled way too loudly. And blushed wildly
Another speaker had already taken the microphone. Several people, in a semicircle around us, all turned our way, put their fingers to their lips, and went “shhhhhh!”
My face turned even more red, I’m sure.
When things settled down, I turned to my new, attractive, young friend and said, sincerely, “that was very funny.”
So much, though, for The Dean bringing any sense of Decorum to the room!
Soundtrack Suggestion
I don’t like you But I love you Seems that I’m always Thinkin’ of you Oh, ho, ho, you treat me badly I love you madly You’ve really got a hold on me
Something, eventually, had to give. And, if you’ve followed along, you know that the frequency of my posts here has diminished.
My best advice at this point is a quote from that old TV show “What’s My Line?” ... you know, the part where John Charles Daly would say “enter and sign in, please.” Over there, in the right hand column of this page, there is now a section called “Subscribe.” If you sign yourself up in that little rectangular box, you will be sent an email every time I post something new here.
I’m not going away. I’m just making life slightly more manageable.
Thanks for understanding.
Soundtrack Suggestion
I’ve got a feeling, a feeling deep inside Oh yeah, Oh yeah. (that’s right.) I’ve got a feeling, a feeling I can’t hide Oh no. no. Oh no! Oh no. Yeah! Yeah! I’ve got a feeling. Yeah!
I’ve always prided myself on my openness, my honesty, and my emotional availability. Over the course of my lifetime, I’ve frequently received favorable comments regarding these qualities. This despite the fact that I’m a guy and I know lots of men (maybe most) who have absolutely no clue what the term “emotional availability” might mean. Or how to invoke it.
These particular traits are consistent with the guiding philosophy of my life, namely: I believe in being present. In expressing this belief, I’m talking about something a lot deeper than Woody Allen’s quip of “showing up is 80 percent of life.” No: I intend something decidedly more profound — of much greater difficulty level — than simply being physically located in a particular place at a particular time.
In truth, I believe that being present is the secret of life: that without the ability to be present, I’d really be missing out on what the total human experience has to offer. Being present takes energy, though, so it’s likely the reason that most people avoid it, don’t practice it, and just generally find some other way to go about their business.
The way I see it, being present is manifested both in my relationship to self and my relationship to others.
In my relationship to self, being present means that I’m aware in the moment. I’m tuned in to my emotions. I know that I’m breathing in and out. I have a keen sense of my surroundings. I sense all that’s going on around me and what kind of meaning I’m making of these events: realizing that my experience is not necessarily “reality.” Being present means that I’ve left all previous moments behind...and that I’m not wasting energy anticipating future ones. It’s living in the here and now. It’s making the most of the time I have been given. It’s a paradigm that guides me to take advantage of every single instant of this preciousness called life.
I also believe, however, that the highest level of being present takes the form of being available for someone else. Being present for another may take the form of simply silently sitting. It surely involves total focus and really listening when they speak. It means not interrupting. It’s immediacy: it means seeking deep understanding of the other person’s experience in the moment. It’s being curious about them and setting aside all judgments. It’s eye contact and empathy and softness. And maybe the occasional touch. It means being available for another person to share themselves. Totally. With complete safety. In my presence.
Being present is not “the truth,” though I believe it is “the way.” I believe that being present, for yourself or another, is the greatest gift you can give. Or receive.
Soundtrack Suggestion
Mornings in April Sharing our secrets We’d walk until the morning was gone. We were like children Laughing for hours The joy you gave me lives on and on. ’Cause I know you by heart.
Just a couple of weeks ago, I wrote seven (little known?) things about myself here in response to Pistachio’s meme-tag post. Now, yet another version of the game has overtaken the internet, this time on Facebook. This variation calls for individuals so tagged to produce a list of “25 things” about themselves.
Robert Lanham, of salon.com, writes that he was originally irritated by this new meme, but has since changed his mind. He now says, “once you stop being annoyed you realize that, at its best, it’s one of the more compelling -- and, yes, even oddly inspiring -- wastes of time to hit the Web in years.”
I was eventually tagged, decided to participate, and posted a list on my Facebook page yesterday. Here is what I wrote, offered here in slightly edited form.
Here are the original Facebook rules (meant to be published at the top of your “25 things” list):
Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you. (To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people [in the right hand corner of the app] then click publish.)
Please note (about this post): caveat lector. It’s very doubtful that I could write “25 things” about myself that are superficial or humorous. You may find that they are uncomfortably revealing and/or mildly entertaining. If you’re going to go ahead and read more, brace yourself...
1. My ex sister-in-law once said that every time she heard the song “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” she thought of me.
2. Which was pretty perceptive, since I’ve struggled with anxiety and depression all my life.
3. I’ve never had what you would call a successful long-term relationship. I was married for ten years, but it wasn’t a good place for me to be. During the marriage, I became addicted to Valium (for over seven years). Just to numb me to the pain.
4. After the marriage, I became an alcoholic. (Well, sort of true. I was probably an alcoholic from the time I took my first drink...at about age 16.) My last drink, though, was on August 13, 1983. I’m very proud of my 25-plus years of sobriety.
5. When I was five years old and in kindergarten, I rode the bus to school every day. One day, I didn’t get off at my elementary school, but stayed on the bus until the end of the line. Just to see where it went. It resulted in one exasperated bus driver. And a phone call to my parents, of course.
6. Ms. Anderson and Ms. Howard (can’t remember now if they were “Miss” or “Mrs.”) were my second and third grade teachers, respectively. They were primarily responsible for nurturing and encouraging my early interests in reading and math.
7. My first girlfriend’s name was Betty T. This was in sixth grade. She had a twin brother. And their father was the superintendent of schools. I hear she’s still alive.
8. During the 2006-07 academic year, I had an insufferable bully as my supervisor. I’ve never been all that good around abusive people, and this time it almost killed me. The more I stood up for myself, the more abusive the relationship got and the more physically sick I became. To this day, I think I dramatically let down all the people who worked for me and believed I could be an agent of change.
9. I was ordered, by a physician, to take a month off work during January 2007. I was in so much physical pain at the time, I wished to die; I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life on disability. That I’m now recovering is a monumental testimonial to the resilience of the human body (and spirit).
10. If I could make a living from my writing and photography, I would. Those are my true passions.
11 Given my love of books and reading, though, I probably should have been a librarian. (It was a librarian who tagged me to write these 25 things.)
12. When I was in grade school, I was drew a cow with a purple crayon. Which was harshly judged by my teacher. Everyone knows that cows aren’t purple. I was devastated. I felt like I’d had the crap beaten out of me.
13. The most elusive thing in my life is love. Or at least being loved back.
14. What I want most is to be understood.
15. I was once told, with intense genuineness, “Jim, I’ve never met anyone like you!” Which was both exhilarating and dismaying.
16. I have an enlarged prostate (BPH; benign prostatic hyperplasia). I’ve had 2 to 3 blood tests every year for the last 12 years to monitor my PSA (prostate specific antigen, the screening test for prostate cancer). It keeps rising. I keep the data on an Excel spreadsheet, and furnish my urologist with a least-squares plot of the line every time I see him. My last number was slightly alarming.
17. I’m not nearly afraid of death as I am of dying slowly and painfully.
18. The two most favorite weekends of my life were (1) at a rented cabin, by Lincoln City on the Oregon coast, during one Christmas, with J; and (2) at a borrowed cabin, north of Florence on the Oregon coast, one spring, with C.
19. As comfortable as I am living in the Bay Area, I am homesick for Oregon every single day.
20. I will never be a parent in this lifetime. If I had had kids, though, I couldn’t have done better than T, B, and R. Three of my favorite people on earth.
21. I would do anything for T, B or R. Anything. All they would ever need to do is ask.
22. Same goes for my good friend V.
23. I have written a [this] blog for over three years and never really developed a readership. Those that once read, have stopped. Interesting that I persist. Crazy, perhaps.
24. I’m a Macintosh person who has owned and used Windows machines for years.
25. I taught myself HTML and developed a website, in 1993, before most people had ever heard of “the web.”
26. If I had more energy, I’d seek to be a college president. I’d be excellent.
27. I’ve “dated” through the personal ads for years. My profiles have always been totally honest. And almost every woman I’ve met this way has engaged in some kind of false advertising in one way or another. (The most common behavior: lying about age.)
28. I was once told by a woman that I am such an intense listener, so “present,” that it’s scary: that this quality likely chases potential female partners away.
29. I love long, deep conversations, in person, preferably with a significant other. Yet, here I sit alone in Starbucks writing about myself for my Facebook page.
30. I’m pretty tired of living in pain every day.
31. I didn’t censor myself much here. If you read this far, well, how did you DO that?
32. It seems I couldn’t stop at 25. But I’ll do that now.
Soundtrack Suggestion
If you knew that you would die today Saw the face of god and love Would you change?
If you knew that love can break your heart When you’re down so low that you cannot fall Would you change?
If you knew that you would be alone Knowing right, being wrong, Would you change?
If you knew that you would find a truth That would bring a pain that can’t be soothed Would you change?
It’s a kids’ book, but I was intrigued. So, to provide further evidence that anything you can think of is available on the internet, I found and ordered a copy. It arrived today. For some reason, I just had to have it.
Here’s my response to “Pistachio’s” post, published yesterday, challenging us all to a game of “meme tag.”
The instructions for this blogging exercise are...
● Republish these rules. ● Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post. ● Share seven (preferably not-well-known) facts about yourself in the post. ● Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs. ● Let them know they’ve been tagged.
The problem for me in playing this game is that I’m not sure what I could possibly disclose here that would be more revealing than stuff I’ve already written about. Plus, I’m pretty reluctant to actually “tag” somebody at the end. But, here goes anyway...
1. I had blond hair for the first few years of my life. I think I really was meant to be a California surfer dude, but things just never turned out that way since I was born in the Midwest. I moved to the Golden State way too late.
2. My first job was as a paperboy for the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram (I had a route in Rice Lake, Wisconsin). I absolutely hated the job during the dark, sub-zero mornings of northern Wisconsin winters. My second job was as a shelf-stocker and box-boy at a local grocery store. I still have the box cutter I was issued at that job.
3. My first “publication” was in the same Leader-Telegram, a letter to the editor, appearing on May 4, 1970...the same day as the massacre of four students at Kent State University. It was written to express my outrage over President Nixon’s decision to expand the Vietnam war with the invasion of Cambodia. Before graduating later that month, I boycotted classes and was part of the largest demonstration in the college’s (University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire) history. I wore an arm-band over my graduation gown in protest of the war.
4. I was married for ten years, in my twenties. We didn’t have kids, just two Siamese cats named “Jude” and “Jo-Jo.” I haven’t seen or talked to her in over 25 years.
5. I went to parties for a living for several years of my life...back in the late 70s and early 80s. Well, really, I was called an “event photographer,” but that just meant I went to fraternity and sorority functions all the time: sometimes every day of the week. Looking back, it was a pretty bizarre life (and lifestyle). In the end, I just never made it as a “starving artist.”
6. At age 37, I lived with a 23-year-old woman for about three months. The relationship fell apart quickly. At one point I mentioned “Woodstock.” She thought I was talking about a pizza joint.
7. A married woman half my age who lives in another state calls me her soul-mate. And vice versa. (No, it’s not Pistachio.)
8. While having breakfast at Noah’s Bagels this morning, I heard “Bubbly” by Colbie Caillat playing in the background. I just love this song. I almost always am on the verge of tears when I hear it. It’s just one of those emotional kind of tunes for me.
(Ooops! That makes eight!) Anyway: The End. (I’m not going to single out any other blogger(s) for this challenge. But, please, if you take me up on it because you’ve read this post, let me know!)
Soundtrack Suggestion
I’ve been awake for a while now you’ve got me feelin like a child now cause every time I see your bubbly face I get the tinglies in a silly place
It starts in my toes and I crinkle my nose where ever it goes I always know that you make me smile please stay for a while now just take your time where ever you go
Where ever, where ever, where ever you go Where ever, where ever, where ever you go Where ever you go, I’ll always know Cause you make me smile here, just for a while
