Why You Need These 10 Kinds of Friends

Everybody knows that friendships are an essential part of a healthy, happy life; but in this age of Facebook, the word “friend” just ain’t what it used to be.  When I was growing up, only a small child would refer to someone they’d just encountered as a “friend”; nowadays, many of us have “friends” we’ve never actually met.  But in a way, this redefinition of the word friend has highlighted a fact about friendship that has always been true:  it is no one-size-fits-all affair.  Yes, we all need that “BFF”* relationship, the one where you can pour your heart out and reveal your deepest darkest secrets and laugh, cry and stuff your face, all within the sanctity of a judgment free zone.  But just because all of our relationships don’t meet this standard, it doesn’t mean they are not friendships.  It just means that the different people in our lives speak to different aspects of ourselves, and all of those aspects should be honored.  Here are 10 kinds of friends I think everyone needs:

1)      The Funny Friend:  Hopefully, you instantly identified this person in your mind, the one who can always make you laugh, no matter how bad your day was or what else is going on in your life.  I am lucky enough to have a couple of these friends, people whose razor sharp, lightning speed wit can take my breath away and make me forget, even if it’s only for a minute, why I was ever feeling sorry for myself at all.  The funny friend is often not so much a person you spill secrets to; this is more the place you go when you need an instant lift.  Funny friends are the coffee (or wine) of the friendship world!

2)     The Shopping Friend:  I use the word “shopping” here as an example, but this is the friend who gets you out of the house, whether it is to go shopping, see a movie or even go for a hike; mutually enjoyed activities are a crucial part of this friendship.  Most girls have a “shopping friend”, but can also have “book club friends”, “coffee friends”, “yoga class friends”, you name it.  The bonding is over something that maybe your BFF isn’t into, or a very specific hobby or interest.  I actually have “horror movie friends”, because I LOVE horror movies and both my BFF and husband HATE them; I need to channel my enthusiasm somewhere!  These sorts of friends allow us to express pieces of ourselves that might get denied otherwise.

3)     The Motivating Friend:  You know the one, your friend who probably wears a cape and a mask in some alternate reality.  This is the person who has actualized their dreams and encourages you to believe you can too.  The best part about motivating friends is that because they are secure in themselves, they never use shame or belittling as “motivating tools”.  They genuinely see the potential in every situation and are more than happy to help you see the potential in yours.  This person is crucial to have in your life.

4)     The “Lazy” Friend: the counterpoint to the motivating friend is your friend who calls (or texts) you to announce that they have eaten an entire box of Pop-Tarts while watching a marathon of “The Good Wife”.  This person is comfortable with mess, both theirs and yours, and is there to let you off the hook on days when you know for a fact you are going down.  The coolest part about our “lazy” friends is that they are not actually lazy—they have jobs and raise children and do all the things your motivating friend does (although without, perhaps, the same Martha Stewart flair)—they are just more comfortable with down time and relaxing than most of us ever will be.  And in this way, they are super heroes, too.

5)     The Old Friend:  not chronologically (necessarily), just a friendship of a long enough duration that no period of your life is unknown to this person.  Like an old couch, an old friend is a place you can flop down and reminisce or rehash or sometimes just complain without having to complete hours of backstory.  This person is a witness to all you have been through, and while you may have grown apart geographically or even ideologically, they are in your bones and always there when you need them.

6)     The “Artsy” Friend:  “Artsy” can mean a million things, but you know one of these people the minute you see them; whether their art is music, painting, dancing, crafting, whatever, this is most likely the person who will push you out of your comfort zone.  These people see the world with different eyes than most, and they will encourage you to do the same.  Your “artsy” friend might introduce you to opera or ballet or Van Gogh…or maybe just encourage you to wear a new color or try some exotic food.  But “artsy” people explore their creativity and inspire you to do so as well. 

7)     The “Friend From Another Place”:  in the old days, this might have been someone you met at summer camp or on vacation, an exchange student or even just a pen pal…I once corresponded with a girl I met on Cape Cod for a year just because we had the same first name!  Now with the internet and Facebook, our opportunities to make this friend have exploded; you can “friend” someone who lives halfway around the world.  The key piece of the friend from another place is this:  they have lived a very different life than you and broaden your horizons.  This friend is extremely important in order to expose you to new ideas and a culture (or cultures) other than your own.  Even if that culture is the culture of Wisconsin, when you live in Maine!  Nowadays many of us have a lot of friends from other places, and this is a very, very good thing.

8)     The Tedious Friend:  come on, you know you have one!  The tedious friend is the one whose name makes you wince when you see it on caller ID, but you pick up anyhow.  I don’t recommend having a lot of tedious friends, but one is helpful.  Because our tedious friends are usually extremely well-intentioned, good-hearted people who nevertheless do an inordinate amount of complaining, or relating of insignificant detail, or sometimes even bragging…our tedious friend teaches us patience and let’s face it, they make us feel like we are a good friend.  And that is a really great feeling.

9)     The “Crazy” Friend:  this is the one you have been waiting for, am I right?  All along you have been worried that I wasn’t going to mention the “crazy” one because this is the friend EVERYBODY definitely has.  And ALL of your other friends know who your crazy friend is.  “Oh, he/she is the crazy one” is the response you will get to any mention of this person’s name.  But you LOVE your crazy friend like crazy.  Our “crazy” friends are more daring, ruthless, spontaneous, adventurous and “out there” than most of us could ever dream of being.  They inspire us to take risks and live it up on occasion.  They remind us that life doesn’t have to be such a serious affair.  They allow us to own our passions and maybe, just maybe, live them too.

10) The BFF* (see above) You are the one, dearest, I absolutely cannot do without.  This is why I need the other nine:  aren’t you glad I have all these other friends to take some of the pressure off of you?

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WHY THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT

So a friend of mine was recently bemoaning the propensity we all have for looking at the past, most especially our childhood, through rose-colored glasses.  “It's a great time to be a kid. NOW. It's a great time to be a kid at any point in time!” she lamented.  And of course, she is right.  It is GREAT to be a kid, for too many reasons to count, most of them relating to the fact that ignorance is bliss and not being responsible for anyone but yourself is basically the definition of freedom. 

The reason so many of us have rose-colored memories of childhood is because childhood is a time in life when we are in fact viewing the world through that rose-colored filter.  If we were lucky enough to come from a relatively happy home…if we were lucky enough to have enough to eat, a roof over our head and all of our basic needs taken care of…if we were lucky enough to be loved.  If all of these things were true, then we undoubtedly lived in a space of security, wonder and unfettered possibility.  Unburdened by all the knowledge and responsibility that comes with adulthood, children are free to roam in the field of imagination where dragons are as common as clouds and the realm of the magical is not only possible, it is probable.

My childhood was spent in the 1970’s and as far as glorifying that as an era to come up in, I am guilty as charged.    The comic piece of it is this:  compared to my son’s life, I basically grew up on an episode of “Survivorman”, so unsupervised and wild were we.  But I had the ridiculous privilege, so uncommon today, of growing up in the kind of neighborhood where everybody knew everybody, and everyone knew what kids belonged where, and a lot of Moms were able to be at home during the day, so eyes were everywhere. 

Summer mornings we would roll out of bed and hit the streets after breakfast, only to return at mealtimes.  When I think of the adventures we took alone at such a young age, I am flabbergasted.  Our parents would be arrested today for what we were allowed to do back then.  One of the false arguments I hear about this was that the world was “safer” then.  This goes back to my friend’s lament.  Statistically speaking, the world was probably far more dangerous, but because we didn’t have the 24 hour news cycle apprising us of every time a kid falls off his bike, we remained blissfully free of fear.

My husband and I have been lucky enough to be raising our son in one of those “old-fashioned” type of neighborhoods.  There is only one road in to a series of cul-de-sacs and most of us know each other and each other’s children by name.  The kids can ride their bikes in the streets, and we are the neighborhood to beat at Halloween…people come to us from miles around.  We have woods to explore in our backyard, a common land with a good sledding hill and some well-attended neighborhood events that give us a nice sense of community. 

But the kids certainly don’t have the kind of freedom that I did growing up, not only in the lack of any real independence, but also in not having that unstructured, unsupervised play time.  So many activities outside of the house, and then yes, I am going to bang the drum of too many electronics again inside the house.  My parents were constantly telling us to “go play in the yard” (and by this they meant ANY yard we could get to on our own) and we did; how many versions of tag did YOU know?  Not to mention “Red Light, Green Light”, “Red Rover”, “Hide and Seek”, “Capture the Flag”…to have a good time, you needed nothing but some other kids, NOTHING.  And that seems to be the piece of childhood that is dying on the vine.

It is ironic that it seems like childhood has traded one kind of freedom for another.  We had a physical freedom, yes; but also the freedom from the tyranny of the electronic age, where any idiot with a cell phone can capture your personal moments and transmit them to the world.  We suffered our “growing pains” of all kinds in private…I am so grateful that there is no permanent record of my humiliations, my confusion, my angst, my immaturity.  I found my way without a spotlight on me, and most kids today will never understand that particular kind of freedom. 

On the other hand…when I think about what life must have been like for my LGBT peers, I shudder.  No role models, no open dialogue, no understanding that they are not struggling alone; for them the world is much more free now (although obviously far from ideal).   I think about all the kids I grew up with who today would receive a diagnosis and nurturing treatment; we called them “hyperactive”, “dumb” and “weird”.  I think about kids who grew up in situations of domestic violence in a time when police and even communities “looked the other way”.  I think about kids who grew up in times of insidious racial oppression.  In all these ways and more, kids have it much better today than at any point in history.  And that is more than worth any sacrifices we have made to the sanctity of childhood.

Childhood was once upon a time a luxury of the privileged.  Nowadays, most children in developed countries are afforded the relative freedoms of the childhood experience.  Children were once considered properties, boys much more valuable than girls.  Now kids are so much more than people too—they are universally acknowledged as the most precious resource on earth.  Not so long ago, it was unusual for a woman to get a college education; now, more women than men will earn at least a bachelor’s degree. 

It is easy to long for “the good old days” and forget everything that was bad about them.  Anytime a child is born into a situation where he or she is wanted, loved and provided for is a GREAT time to be a kid.  Too many children, now and then, are not lucky enough to have such circumstances.  Parenthood will always be the most sacred responsibility entrusted to the human soul; it should never be taken lightly, nor should it ever be foisted on anyone against their will.  I recently saw a sign that said “All love is unconditional; everything else is just approval”.  Approval is nice, but love is fierce, driven and indomitable.  No matter when, where and how a child grows up, if that child is loved, he or she will be alright.

 

WHY GOD IS FUNNY

Recently there have been a lot of people in the news blaming their bad behavior on God.  A contemporary version of "the devil made me do it", it got me thinking about how God is funny that way.  “Saints” and “sinners” alike can fault God for what they do because God is literally all things to all people.  God is love, imagination, peace, freedom, tyranny, restriction, punishment, nonexistent…God is whatever you make Him/Her/It out to be and that is ever changing.  For some people, myself included, God is not something “out there” to obey and fear; God is instead “in here”, guiding us with our gut instincts, our intuition, our passion and even our anger. 

For a lot of people God is “out there”; a beneficent overseer who intervenes in response to prayer with healing, hope, comfort and even fortunate “coincidences”.  For other people God is a cruel despot, creator of all but “chooser” of few; this capricious judge asks his minions to follow the contradictory guidelines set forth in a book written thousands of years ago with no amendments or further instruction.  Having formed the world and its people, He then apparently had some serious second thoughts and is engaged in a centuries-long process of culling the herd.  God is all these things and so many more; ask a million people and you will be told a million things:  God is bread, wine, miracles, natural disasters, plagues, music, art, censorship, tragedy, comedy…God is funny.

Everyone thinks they own God, even nonbelievers.  This is because God is one-stop-shopping.  Whatever you want to believe (or not believe) becomes your personal truth because frankly, we’re all making this stuff up anyhow.  God is as much our creation as we are His/Hers/Its.  Our relationship to God is the ultimate in symbiosis:  each depends entirely on the other for survival.  Without God there is no us…but without us there is no God.  Even atheism is such an active position that it creates a defiant stance of what is “not there”, much like the fabled elephant-in-the-room. 

We all live life following the trail of breadcrumbs we find, whether we understand that this is what we are doing or not.  It is the very unpredictability of life that drives us forward; it is the same chaos that causes us to withdraw.  When we are blundering in the dark, we always seek the light; when we are standing in the light, we yearn for shade.  Contradiction is a natural part of living and being.  Therefore, contradiction must also be the essence of God.  The minute we think we “know” something, we shut down to possibility.  So the essence of faith is to find the ease in uncertainty.  God is often described as “all knowing”, but our experience of life eventually leads us to understand that it is exactly when we don’t know what comes next that miracles can happen.

For people who try to live life according to the old book that the Almighty has not seen fit to update, “Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me” is a highly ranked rule to live by.  The irony of this is, of course, that they are making the old book “God” instead of letting God be God.  “False” Gods, in fact, are the order of the day…anything we worship above the “still small voice” becomes our God, our true north.  Money, success, fame are all popular, though capricious Gods.  Some people worship science, some people worship logic; many people worship other people, be it a celebrity, a spouse, a parent or a child. 

It doesn’t matter what we worship, if it is something outside of ourselves, we are driven by it and drawn to it.   We live in the vortex of its pull, always striving, reaching, wanting.  But there is an inherent flaw in worshiping anything at all:  it takes away your power and puts it into the hands of the concept/thing/person you worship.  But concepts, things and people are transient and fluid, so again, you will always find yourself bowing down at the altar of uncertainty.  Things can change in an instant and if you are clinging to what was, you are missing out entirely on what is and what could be.  Worship is a narrow focus, not seeing the forest for the tree.

We think of life as a straight line, with a beginning, middle and end, but truthfully life is a circle.  We circle back to who we are, why we are here and what we want to experience, endlessly.  Jerry Garcia said “You ain’t gonna learn what you don’t want to know” and that is perhaps the single best description of life I have ever heard.  When anyone declares they know God, they have given up the key to what makes life such a grand, intense, powerful joyride:  doubt.  Voltaire wrote:  “Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one”.  

When we admit we don’t know, the door is wide open for everybody.  Infinite possibility becomes your ruler and your guide, and everything is welcomed there.  Open your mind, open your heart, open your eyes and see that when you exclude anything, you lose everything.  That’s why God is funny; you have to give up certainty to experience faith.  You have to forget what you “know” to be who you are.  “Man plans, God laughs” is a popular saying because it rings so true to how we experience our journey. 

Yes, we plan, but we never really know what is around the next corner and isn’t that a very good thing?  So let’s let God do the planning, while WE laugh.  Because God is funny.

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Why I Haven't 'Been There, Done That'

So our old dog is reaching her end-of-days.  My husband and I picked her from a litter as a newborn pup (truthfully, she picked HIM—I should have known better), and we have trained, raised and loved her for almost 12 years (as best as she would allow these things).  My son just turned 10, so she has been part of his everyday life for his entire life, and he will be profoundly affected by the loss of her.  We are trying to prepare him, but we know that when the time comes it will be heart wrenching for all of us, even me.  I say even me because Zoey, crotchety old lady that she was born to be, has always viewed me as her rival for house alpha.  Therefore, far from being the loving and devoted companion that most people experience in relationship to their dogs, I have had a girl in perpetual puberty.  In dog language, her every response to me is sighing, eye-rolling, screaming “I hate you!” and storming off.  In dog language “storming off” is skulking away with occasional reproachful glances over her shoulder.  Zoey has perfected the skunk eye and frequently growls when I try to cuddle her.  My son adores her anyhow, and in processing his grief over her imminent departure accused me of never wanting to get another dog again.  I told him I will get another dog for him, but I don’t need another because I’ve “been there, done that!”  In thinking about it more, I have come to realize that really isn’t true at all.

I am not a big fan of rap; (translation:  I am not a fan of rap AT ALL)…but I am going to paraphrase the rapper Drake here:  sometimes I wish I could go back in life; not to change things, just to feel a couple of things twice.  There are so many moments like that, aren’t there?  Picking a wriggling puppy for your very own, falling in love, having your breath taken away by something, someone…those peak experiences that seem to hold every drop of the universe in one moment.  All those firsts:  the first time you rode your bike without training wheels, the first time behind the wheel of a car, your first kiss; these memories are so indelible you can conjure them completely and feel the fear, triumph, exhilaration all over again.  But what about those other moments, the quieter ones?  The ones you took entirely for granted, but now wish you could go back and re-experience, just to appreciate them?  In trying to imagine how our life will feel once Zoey is gone, I find myself wishing I could go back to a time when my Dad was still alive.  No specific time…I just wish I could remember how it felt to know he was there and to assume he always would be.   I used to love listening to my parents speak to each other; so much love and affection and respect.  What would I give to go back in time and hear their voices together again, even just coming from the other room?

There is an amazing scene in the movie “Peggy Sue Got Married”, where Peggy Sue picks up the phone and hears her long-dead Grandmother’s voice.  Of course, since Peggy Sue has gone back in time, her Grandmother is alive again, but it just hadn’t occurred to her until that moment.  Kathleen Turner nails it, and I defy you to watch her without crying yourself.  When we are young, we take so much for granted; our grandparents, parents, life and world…it feels like they all exist FOR us somehow, and therefore will not go away unless we wish them to do so.  But that first loss, whether it be a dog or a person, rocks that perception to the core.  Life becomes impermanent, the world uncertain.  We then have to make a choice:  do we embrace uncertainty, or become rigid ourselves in order to create an illusion of permanence?  It seems like such a natural response to death to shut down, close up the shutters, batten down the hatches…but what if instead we became more fluid, rolling in the grief and allowing ourselves to feel all that pain?  Would it not stand to reason that in being open to experiencing anguish, we open ourselves a little more to experiencing joy?  Doesn’t it make sense that shut down to pain is shut down to everything but open to pain is also open to joy?  Queen Elizabeth II said, “Grief is the price we pay for love”; but consider, isn’t grief just another form of passion?

That is why I am asserting now—there is NO SUCH THING as “been there, done that”.  Because each experience changes us, we can never really encounter the same thing twice.  “You can’t go home again” is a vernacular wisdom that speaks to this; but more accurately, I think we come to understand over time that we ourselves are “home”.  Home is not out there, someplace to get “back” to…it is within, the complete picture of all you are and all you have experienced.   When we open ourselves to life, be it loss or peak experiences or mundane moments, we become more and more at home with it, and with ourselves.  You are the peak experience, the drop that contains the entire universe in it, so all things become welcomed in your life.  Pain…grief…melancholy…joy…desire…wondering…it is all there, all the time and yet always new.  As you allow yourself to own all of your feelings, you come to realize that even on a day to day basis you have NOT been there nor done that.  Because you are constantly renewing, you never feel exactly the same way twice.  So relish it all!  Relish it as it happens, and you will live life without regrets.  As Rumi wrote, "You are not a drop in the ocean.  You are the entire ocean in one drop."

Zoey passed away on January 12, 2016  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kara-postkennedy/why-i-havent-been-there-d_b_8964464.html

 

Why I Wish You Wouldn't Do That

You know what?  I wish you wouldn’t do that.  Do what, you ask?  The list is endless, my friends, truly endless.  From BIG things (I wish you wouldn’t ride a motorcycle without a helmet!  I wish you wouldn’t smoke!) to small things (I wish you wouldn’t leave your wet towel on the floor…I wish you wouldn’t eat onions when I am about to be trapped in a car with you for several hours) I am a veritable wishing machine some days.  I wish many things for the strangers who cross my path (I wish you would learn how to merge!  I wish you wouldn’t write a check in the express lane!) and for loved ones as well (I wish you wouldn’t stay in a relationship where you aren’t appreciated!  I wish you wouldn’t put yourself down!)  I wish on stars, wishbones and lucky pennies thrown in a fountain.  I wish for myself most of all:  I wish you wouldn’t worry so much…I wish you wouldn’t make choices that don’t serve your highest good.  I wish we all wouldn’t do that, actually.  That most of all.

In case you are concerned that all of this wishing-you-wouldn’t-do-stuff is making me overly judgmental, let me clarify something…there is an enormous difference between making discernments and having preferences and “judgment”.  We have become an incredibly politically correct society as of late; I’m amazed the color orange doesn’t have its own special interest group protesting it being labeled the new black.  But if you say to ANYONE, friend or foe, “I wish you wouldn’t do that”, it does not become a judgment until you add the thought “because I believe it makes you a bad/stupid/deficit human being”.  While I do truly wish people would LEARN TO MERGE, for example, the prevalence of this handicap leads me to believe that it is a struggle for people from all walks of life, and therefore not a reliable indicator of anything except an inability to merge.  And while I really, really wish everybody on planet earth would QUIT SMOKING CIGARETTES, until the day that I have no unhealthy habits of my own, I am in no position to judge.  And I’m not giving up my diet Dr. Pepper, so this conversation is done.

I just got back from attending the New York State Fair for the first time since I was a kid, and as I’m sure you can imagine, I got to observe a whole sea of humanity doing things I wish they wouldn’t do.   William Blake wrote:  “Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to restrain” and I think this is very true.  However, when you are immersed in a world of deep fried candy bars and wine slushies (!?!) you are not talking desire, you are talking impulse…I mean, it’s RIGHT THERE.   So I although I wish my son and my husband wouldn’t order mozzarella sticks with a side of cheese fries for lunch, I truly understand why they did.  Because I ordered a fried clam boat.  HA!  We all make unhealthy choices (hopefully only occasionally), we all can be inconsiderate at times (mainly because we’re oblivious or distracted), we all give in to impulses we later regret and I WISH WE WOULDN’T DO THAT.  But it doesn’t make us “bad” people or even “wrong”.  It makes us human, another drop of water in that sea of humanity.

Which brings me back to our inability to merge.  When you think about it, every time you have the thought “I wish you wouldn’t do that” it’s because you believe the behavior impacts you in a not-so-positive way.   The obvious example is your road trip companion who orders the stinky sandwich with hours of the journey left to go.  The not so obvious example is the stranger who rides his motorcycle without a helmet.  I could talk technically about how people who engage in high risk behaviors cause all of our insurance premiums to go up, or I could talk practically about the fact that NONE of us wants to see ANYONE get hurt; it doesn’t matter if the person is a stranger.  When you hear someone has lung cancer, for another example…I am hard pressed to think of the scenario where this is feel-good news, even (again) if you don’t know them personally.   When we do things that we know other people wish we wouldn’t do, we are failing to merge.  We are failing to recognize that “the butterfly effect” is real, and that small decisions we make can impact the whole in larger, unpredictable ways.  One of the greatest truths any of us can ever hope to grasp is that our happiness is other people’s happiness and their happiness is ours.   Until this resonates with us, we are not merging properly.

My father had a simple wish he articulated on a regular basis:  he wanted a magic wand.  He, like all of us, wished for the magical ability to solve the problems of the world with a single stroke.  The reality is we do have a “magic wand” at our disposal at all times:  RESPECT.  Respect for ourselves, respect for others, respect for the planet, respect for our oneness.  Hey, how does a Buddhist order a pizza?  “Make me one with everything”.  Ha.  When we truly respect life, we are one with everything.  And in order to fully respect ourselves, we have to do our best to stop doing the things we wish we wouldn’t do.  Trickle-down economics has proven to be a bust, but trickle-down respect is a movement I can get behind.  Treat your whole self with respect—your body, your mind, your soul and yes, even your true desires—and that self-respect will impact every single person you come in contact with in a positive way.  Think of your actions as throwing a stone into a pond; not only is the point of impact affected, but ripples go out in every direction for a radius you have no way of predicting.  Failure to recognize your impact on humanity, on your world is the epitome of a lack of self-respect.  And I wish you wouldn’t do that.  Respect yourself and realize that everything you are and everything you do truly matters. 

Why You Can't Always Get What You Want

Growing up, my parents were very immune to the power of “fads” and “trends”.   In the case of my Dad, this was simply a matter of obliviousness; my Mom, on the other hand, was a practical, budget-conscious homemaker who didn’t have the time of day (or the cash) for what was “popular”.  This meant, in part, that YES, I DID wear my older sister’s hand-me-downs…even though she is ten years my senior.  If you think showing up at a new middle school wearing clothes that went out of style a decade ago doesn’t build character, you’ve got another think coming. 

When the three girls who lived across the street all got brand new bikes with stylish banana seats?  I got a garage sale bike with stripped gears.  My prom dress was selected by its deeply discounted price, due to some permanent staining on the full skirt.  Not a problem for Mom!  She just split the skirt at the seam and resewed it to hide the offending mark.  We were always the last house on the block to get any new thing—cable TV, a VCR, a computer—I am one of the only kids who grew up in a middle class household in the 80’s without access to MTV.  “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” would have been my Mom’s theme song if she had been a fan of the Rolling Stones; I am grateful she wasn’t, because YES, she was one of those parents who frequently burst into song if she found the lyrics pertinent to her point.  Or even if she didn’t.  

Naturally my siblings and I all resented what we saw as her “cheapness”…she was subjected to more than her fair share of sighing, eye-rolling and silent treatments.  Although to be fair, I’m pretty sure she enjoyed the silent treatment.  Now that we are all adults, I think we have a new respect and appreciation not only for the lesson Mom was teaching us, but also for all the things she sacrificed so that we could “get what we need”.    

One characteristic I gained that I am eternally grateful for:  I am, for all intents and purposes, peer-pressure-proof!  If there is something surviving a day wearing a farmyard scene sweater with a burnt orange polyester skirt in a classroom full of designer jeans will teach you…no matter what you’ve been told, no one ever died of embarrassment.   So yes, I am the mythological kid you have heard about!  The one who never tried drugs, the one who (begrudgingly) wore the giant Easter corsages my father bought us to church, the one who was never tempted to “jump off a cliff” just because my friends did…the one who had to develop her self-esteem from the inside out, because I sure as hell wasn’t going to get any self-esteem from the stuff my Mom was willing to buy me.   

I’ve said this before, but you can never say it enough times:  THANKS, MOM.  Because you taught me that “you can’t always get what you want”, I understand that who I am is all that I need.

Now I am a parent too, and Mom’s lessons resonate more than ever.  As a child, I took her continuous message of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” as an affront:  tough darts, farmer!  Them’s the breaks!  As an adult I realize her wisdom and I am trying to impart the same wisdom to my son.  One of the parenting decisions I have made is that he does not have video games or hand held electronics as part of his life.  He is also only allowed access to the computer for school assignments, and always with my strict supervision. 

This is not because I don’t trust him; this is not because I don’t want him to “fit in”.  This is because I want him to understand the power and beauty of his own mind, his own imagination.  The first (and only) time he ever said “I’m bored”, my answer was:  there is NO SUCH THING as being bored; only being BORING.  I explained to him that as long as his brain is working, there is never an excuse for being bored; not in school, not in the car and certainly not in a house full of toys, books, games and art supplies.  When parents say their child can’t cope, for example, on a car trip without electronics, I have to wonder…who it is that is lacking coping skills, child or adult?  We grew up in a world where staring out the car window was as good as it got, and nobody I know ever died from boredom or was murdered by their parents for being an annoyance while they were driving.  We managed.  Quite well, actually.

Today’s plugged in world is a house of cards;  the more reliant we become on machines to give us directions, correct our spelling and entertain our children, the less capable we become of doing any of these things.  But I also think that the constant experience of immediate gratification is dulling us to our own possibilities.  The access we have to wish fulfillment at our fingertips due to the internet—music, movies, books download in a minute, Amazon Prime delivering the goods in two days, and yes, even interactive porn on command—satisfies our external cravings while our internal light grows dimmer. 

But patience is not only a virtue, it is a necessity for soul growth and self-reliance.  Spending time alone with ourselves, spending time without whatever it is we THINK we want—it actually builds our confidence and helps us to discern what our true desires are, versus that quick-fix-retail therapy kind of “want”.  We have ALL become a little like Veruca Salt in “Willy Wonka”, singing “I Want It Now” and forgetting how much we already have inside of us.  But when we plug back into ourselves, we are able to realize that while we may be getting much of what we “want”, we have been lacking what we really need:  a relationship to self that makes sense and nurtures us no matter what the external circumstances.   When we learn to want to be with alone with ourselves, we learn that we have all we need.

PLEASE "like" this for me on the Huffington Post!  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kara-postkennedy/why-you-cant-always-get-w_b_8024882.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

WHY I DON'T BELIEVE

If you ever watched The X-Files, you will remember Fox Mulder had a poster in his office with a picture of a UFO and the legend “I want to believe”.  This was sort of his mission statement and made for endless hours of entertaining television.  However, I have to confess that I do Scully one better on her unspoken credo, “I don’t want to believe” (such sexual tension between those two!) with mine:  I DON’T BELIEVE. 

Don’t get me wrong, I recognize that not only is it possible but it is actually highly probable that there is life on other planets.  And when I say highly probable, I’m talking a 99.9% chance.  What I DON’T BELIEVE is that there are civilizations so far advanced of ours that they are able to build ships that travel light years to visit our planet…and then CRASH.  I also don’t believe that these advanced, sophisticated beings would waste their time kidnapping and probing farmers in the Midwest. 

I also don’t believe that our government is aware of alien activity but is keeping it a secret. Do you really think Joe Biden could keep his mouth shut about that?  Bottom line:  of course there is intelligent life out there, but if they have any interest in us AT ALL (and WHY THE HELL WOULD THEY?) then they have already seamlessly infiltrated our planet and are busily taking notes and not making any obvious plays like crop circles.  So, no…I have no interest in ever discussing UFOS again.

Now that we’ve permanently taken that topic off of the table, I want to speak generally about the idea of “belief” for a moment.  Since the turn of the century we have been enmeshed in a cultural war between “belief” and “the facts”.  Obvious example:  global warming is a fact that polls show a surprising number of people don’t believe.  But as John Oliver brilliantly put it:  "You don't need people’s opinion on a fact; you might as well have a poll asking: ‘Which number is bigger, 15 or 5?’ or ‘Do owls exist?’ or ‘Are there hats?'" 

I love this and he is 100% correct.  EXCEPT…belief is such a powerful force, that even when it is dead wrong, we should not take it lightly.  Perhaps most of all then.  My son and I love the short story Obstinate Uncle Otis, about a man so obstinate that he denies the fact of anything that doesn’t please him, even if evidence to the contrary is right in front of his face.  One day Uncle Otis is struck by lightning and gains an amazing power to deny anything he doesn’t care for out of existence.  If he says there is no such thing as a barn that blocks his view…the barn that blocks his view disappears.  His family is forced to avoid topics that might enable him to deny, for example, the current President out of existence until finally lightning induced amnesia causes Otis to deny himself right out of existence.  A cautionary tale about the power of belief.  End of story, right?

WRONG. We are ALL obstinate Uncle Otis to some degree or another, clinging to our negative and self-limiting beliefs because they feel “safe” or “normal”, rather than peeking our heads above ground to check out the facts.  We have all seen the horrifying evidence of large groups of people bonding together in a false negative conviction and acting on it—the Holocaust, the Salem Witch Trials—so just because the facts don’t support a belief doesn’t mean it cannot be powerfully gripping and destructive. 

This is the whole construct behind cults and even many religions.  If a lie is told in a convincing enough manner it can create a groundswell of support…one charismatic liar can do more harm than the army of honest men who will eventually rise up against him can ever hope to undo.  So it is important that whenever possible we don’t act on or even form an opinion about a piece of information we don’t know to be true.  The internet is a double edged sword in this regard.  The average citizen now has more access to facts than at any other point in history; but also probably a higher exposure to lies since the dark ages ended.  And there are media outlets dedicated to promoting some very dangerous deceptions by masking them in the false authority of “news”.  I won’t mention any names because FOX Mulder wouldn’t want me to.

I DON’T BELIEVE that the lies will prevail; they never do.  “Truth will out” is the inevitable conclusion to any story about a destructive belief.   As a species we have a track record of 100% when it comes to pulling ourselves out of the messes we make. 

But often our progress feels excruciatingly slow; sometimes we have to take the mythic one step back to take two steps forward.   There are people who want to be in control, and just as with the ancient church, promoting fear-based lies is one of the most effective ways to keep people down.  Frightened people are not free people.  

So we must be diligent in our beliefs, and not allow fear to cloud our judgment or take away our power to act.   When we observe people who are laboring under a fear-based delusion, we have to do our best to be compassionate while we continue to free ourselves from our own limiting and excluding views.   I want to believe that we are ALL evolving, every last one of us, and getting closer to the truth every day.  And not unlike Fox Mulder, I want to believe that there is something more out there, something greater than us.  We have seen the power of people working together to promote a lie; imagine how much more powerful we can be if we work together on understanding the truth?