The 'Just Married, Please Excuse' Contest

OR  Lord of the Rings – but not quite the way you might think

 

This post is in response to a contest being held by Yashodhara on her blog 'Y on earth not'. Her new book 'Just Married, Please Excuse' is out. UPDATE: turned out I was one of the 'winners' in this contest though that's not as much of an honor as you'd think given that 50% of contestants 'won' in one way or another. :-) Still, Yashodhara is a very funny writer and I'm glad I made her smile.

We got married twice, like many who have one proverbial foot in the U.S. and another in native India. The first was a ‘City Hall’ affair in California (over my spring break in grad school) where we actually understood the words sanctifying our union, while the other was the usual 3-ring circus affair in India comprising family, food, fuzzy shlokas and festivities.

Fat-finger Fumbles and grammatical travesties

The goriness of brutalized grammar on social websites has now surfaced in my life as an 'issue' for about the 523rd time. We've all encountered these travesties of vocabulary and grammer: they're/their/there, quite/quiet, its/it's, your/you're, to/too, then/than and so on. My friend Nan recently wrote a lucid opinion that got me started (watch this space for a link to it).

 

I seem to know as many victims as perpetrators of said crimes. However faulty grammar is a poor bidder for my emotional bandwidth, perhaps because there are so many more powerful daily irritants ahead in the queue, like judgementalism, boasting and self-promotion.

 

There’s also the fact that with the plethora of devices at our fingertips, a thought has barely to form inside our heads before we spit it out to our cyber communities via cell phone, laptop, tablet etc.

Imperfect recall: what if?

Memories are unreliable chroniclers of facts: sometimes bold,  other times, hazy. Almost always however, they are shape-shifting, shimmery little mirages thrown up by your mind to appease, humor, or...mislead. Are the hazy ones hazy because they are incomplete ? The bold ones trying too hard to convince you? Which ones are true and which ones your own fanciful creations? What do you believe if Belief itself can be trickery?

I read somewhere that the shocking part of Recall is that only a small portion of even our vividest memory is based on actual, retrieved facts. The rest is made up of intelligent cerebral interpolations to fill in the empty spaces and impart the right flavor. Poetic license of the Soul, if you will.

For instance, I know for sure that years ago, my brother really did build a small paper fire in our bedroom in Nairobi. To cook rice in a metal Smarties (like M&Ms) tube behind the bed.
I am less certain however that the rice tasted as creamy, fluffy and yummy as I remember it.

It's much more likely that my mom busted our covert ops at the first whiff of smoke and charred tin.

My brother was 8, I was 3 and I am told that in those days, nothing good had ever come of complete silence from us for over 10 minutes. Our harried and over-worked young mother was in a perpetual state of alertness. She had been primed, among other adventures, by returning to the kitchen one day, after hours of washing clothes in the bathtub. She found my brother lovingly lining up jam jars on the window sill. They were teeming with tadpoles and young frogs he'd 'rescued' from his school drain. She also found me about to start on a baby bottle full of his assorted pond life. My brother's scheme to get me off the bottle was a brilliant, if unacknowledged, success as a few short screams later (not all of them came from me) I was permanently cured of the bottle habit.

Anyway. The point is, she'd developed eyes in the back of her head and a 6th, 7th and 8th sense for what we were up to at any given time.

I'm not surprised though that I remember the taste of that forbidden snack (that never was) so well. We probably came way from the episode with smarting bottoms and sinister promises of our father's fury when he returned later in the evening. That last part was pure bluster, by the way: he was really a lamb.

Yet, our exciting adventure could not possibly end on such a mundane, forgettable note in the annals of my personal history. I'm guessing that history got quietly revised when I recalled our 'good old days' and the episode of the Smarties tube. My brain overwrote the anticlimactic moments with more fitting notes of triumph.

So how do you trust your memories, ever? Not so worrisome with the joyful ones: exaggeration isn't necessarily bad if it stays true to spirit. But how about the dark nasties that everyone harbors in the inner recesses of their hearts?

What if you were to discover one day that the resentment that you feel towards someone has been conflated by your mind? That the anger towards them has been swollen by a hardworking brain filling in the gaps or replacing compassion with angry notes befitting your hurt feelings? Maybe the person's trespass was real but contextually much smaller than it's long residence in your memory has made it?

What if every hurt inside you is only fractionally real?
What if with just one stroke of acceptance, you can banish the majority of your hurts?

What if?

Oyon-isms:
5.5 years old.
To his Uncle Mark as he walked through the door, "Hi Uncle Mark. I just had a tantrum. I cried, yelled and whined for things that were not right. It's called a tantrum and it's not good .Want to see my new 'Lion King' book?"

Bluffers two-step

“I have such doubts!” was the final line in John Shanley's Pulitzer winning play ‘Doubt’. In the movie adaptation, Meryl Streep’s entire wimple clad being shook with remorse as this confession exploded out of her. If only everyone could find such clear expression and catharsis (and a multi $$ movie deal).

Lets admit it: a halfway sensible person second-guesses themselves at least once every day and five times on a Sunday. That's about right when we have sense enough to know that there is so much that we don’t know. Yet the unwritten coda of social interaction and the prevalent culture of confidence requires that we stay firm in our pronouncements even when we suspect they are half-baked at best and plain wrong at worst. And correctly so, I think. If you’re like me, admitting that there are so many alternate possibilities can paralyze you into indecision. Better to stick with your decision, bluff it out and hope that your self confidence and the faith you inspire fools your audience. I think of it as the ‘Bluffers two-step’ where you step outside your bounds of certainty, make defiant eye-contact with the rest of the world, then take the second step forward into your newly created certainly. This is how illusions are created and sold and entire populations dance along to tunes that they know to be off beat. As long as you’re not trying to pull off something ridiculously wrong, it becomes self-fulfilling: off-beat becomes the new beat and if we all dance to it, the world keeps spinning without anyone flying off it.

There are few better staging grounds for this kind of self-fulfilling bravado than parenting a young child. I'll admit that upper management 'brain storming sessions' are also pretty potent.
Case in point, last night I unwisely decided to teach my 5.5 year old double digit addition at 7:30 pm (AKA bedtime), at the fag end of a long and blisteringly hot day at camp. Since he’s watching his favorite movie (‘The Lion King’ these days) in 11 minute sections every night, “what better way to teach addition?” I thought. Especially as he’s been pleading to learn Kumon math (I’ve NO idea why). When he lost focus for the 8^th time in the space of 2 minutes I pulled out my most severe threat - "Do I need to pull your ear?”.

The Ear Pull requires a quick ‘aside’.
Oyon had a short stint with Kumon reading in the recent past (topic for another post) that involved doing nightly homework worth about 30-40 minutes. That is a LONG time to sit still and focus after a long day of 'behaving' at daycare. It doesn't help that for most of his waking hours he is busy roaming inside his significantly active imagination, making up stories, enacting dramas and otherwise being a 5 year old. So in a chapter of inglorious parenting, I had resorted to the 'Ear Pull' as a way to get his wandering mind (and eyes and brain and limbs) to attend to the task on hand so that everyone could get on with their lives. It was a gentle tug, tested on myself,  that induced nothing more than mild and momentary discomfort that redirects his attention. I abandoned it as a regular tool after observing that every day he was acting out right around the 10 minute mark and realizing that 10 minutes was probably his max focus ability at this point. The ear pulling was hurting his feelings, giving me terrible guilt and incidentally, doing absolutely nothing for his focus. I closed that shameful chapter on the high note of restricting homework to 5 pages (but only after my husband pointed that out as the obvious solution). I also offered rewards/bribes for focusing well (that goes into a whole other chapter on Shameful Parenting. Surely you didn’t think there was just one of those?). But I still reserved the ‘Ear Pull’ in my toolbox of 'Measures of the Last Resort'. It nestled snugly in between ‘No TV tomorrow’ and ‘No car or plane toys for 2 days’.

Short on energy and patience as I was last night, out it came at the aforementioned ill-judged moment. As expected, he didn’t pay heed to a duly issued warning and I implemented said Ear Pull. The broken hearted sobbing that then ensued wreaked such havoc on me that I’d have given Streep a run for her money in the ‘doubt’ department. He did momentarily lose some sympathy by angrily shouting ‘I’m going to tell on you to Baba!’ but regained (and doubled it) by following up with a disbelieving ‘That hurt! YOU hurt me!’. Oh my goodness. No one should be the cause of such a look of disbelief and disappointment in their child's eyes!

But how to work my way out of this one now? A complete recant (that my heart wanted) would undermine all future authority. Staying the course (that my mind wanted) risked eroding a little boy’s faith in his mamma.

So of course, I executed the Bluffers Two-step. I asked 'Did I give you warnings? Did I say that if you didn’t focus I’d have to do an Ear Pull?'

One set of leaking eyes, trembling mouth, tear tracked grimy cheeks and curly head nodded an affirmative to both.
First step forward taken: I’d announced that I was right in my choice.
Then I cupped his face in my hands, made nose-to nose contact and said softly “I’m very sorry I hurt you. I love you even when you’re naughty.”
The second step of the dance was complete. The self-fulfilling part came through next as instantly mollified by my apology, he dashed away his tears to say: “I’m sorry too Mamma. I’m going to listen next time. And d’you know what? Now I won’t tell on you. I’ll only tell Baba that you’re the bestest Mamma in the world”

That I  did not deserve to live, was the thought of that moment.
As putridly sappy as his Hallmark card words sounds, it isn't meant as a hearts and roses moment. I neither feel absolved by his undeserved kudos nor believe for a second he really learnt anything from this (except hopefully that no one is above a good apology). This is how unflinching a child's faith in his parents are: faith that they will always love him, protect him, be fair to him. How easily this can be shattered and regained is scary. And the power of apology...man! An apology will get him to back down and fess up and renew faith. Not to mention, it lets Mamma atone for a misjudged move while sticking to her stance.

I gave him an extra guilt induced 5 mins of the movie, though he doesn’t know it (and won’t until he cracks double-digit addition!). And in case my husband’s reading this, “We’re out of Glen Fidditch: I drank the last of it in a toast to the Bluffers Two-step”.

The Law of Entropy

"There's nothing to watch on TV, even when you're watching something on TV" I thought wearily to myself as I clicked through the quadrillion channels we promise ourselves we'll cancel every month. I surfed over to 'NOVA' on PBS, an old favorite from grad school days when FREINDS seemed too puerile and Seinfeld too snarky and cynical for my youthful optimism (I have since learnt to appreciate both shows). At 11 pm on a weekday, after a work day, single parenting (hubby's out of town) and fighting a sinus infection to boot, an old favorite certainly presented the path of least resistance.

 They were discussing the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the concept of 'entropy'. One of the concepts behind entropy is that 'nature tends from order to disorder' and they carefully explained that 'disorder' is actually a 'measure of multiplicity' (from http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/therm/entrop.html#e3). So 'If a given state can be accomplished in many more ways, then it is more probable than one which can be accomplished in only a few ways.' To me this means that things will probably turn out the way you think but not how. So craft all the plans that you want but prepare to watch as they unravel and eventually sort themselves out.

The half-asleep 10 minutes I watched simmered overnight and this morning brought into focus some nebulous thoughts I’ve been happening about how we fulfill ourselves in the unlikeliest ways. For instance, I've always been an empathetic person and thus more prone to feeling sad about the state of the world than is healthy. I’d ago long decided that I'd counter my sadness by becoming a ‘better person' and that self-awareness, planning and hard work is the ticket. Then Life happened and the abovementioned qualities rustled up only overwork, fussiness and frustration. I felt I had insufficient time for volunteerism beyond the few token annual efforts (like sporadically walking dogs at the local shelter, doing park clean-ups, volunteer GIS for disaster relief, writing checks for disasters etc). It was more important right then to focus on professional landmarks, working on the new house and bonding with the husband over shared passions.

Then came our son. Unlike many of my friends, I find that I've done more for others AFTER I became a harassed, overworked mom than before. The way I figure it, I actually feel more gratitude for my life after having been given my son and naturally work harder at giving back. Wanting to model goodness for my son provides me more opportunities to do so. I've invested some critical time into my profession at the key time so now have little more space to give it as well. I still don’t do a fraction of what I'd like to do, but it's more than before. So per the laws of entropy, becoming a 'better person' happened anyway, in spite of me, because there were so many ways for it to happen. I know this is not a truly scientific analogy and I'm not interested in any geeky, scientific critiques of my logic -  but wow. Go figure.

Two days ago my friends, the Subs, became legal parents to LilV. This means that a court declared that Asub was 'forever mother' to the 4 year old perched on her hip and that VBsub, whose hand he was tightly clutching, was his 'forever father'. In the photograph of their bigmoment, there were grins on the Subs' faces as they became a family in every sense. Even though we came to our family via different route, the first family pic they shared from Bangalore when they met their son for the first time, seemed familiar. I remember the first time Shouvik gave me and Oyon a joint hug, collapsing 3 people into one entity without any words. I saw the same thing in their first family picture too and the Law of Entropy called out to me again.

We both got at our but goals in such different ways:

1.  Their parturition was entirely logistical: instead of navigating a maze of hospital corridors and insurance/hospital paperwork, they dealt with bureaucracies and legal systems in two countries. Talk about a tough delivery.
2. Their gestation was over 2 years, not my 36.4 weeks.
3. Unlike mine, their birth plan skipped lightly over c-sections (last resort) and tubal ligation (yes, please if c-section occurs) and landed on precisely how to deal with the foster family to ease the trauma of parting a 3 year old from a loving albeit temporary home.
4. They decorated a nursery and dreamt their share of 'this time next year we'll be three' dreams but unlike me, waited an additional year without bitterness to see it come true.

And here we are now. All parents, all struggling with our roles, delighting in our children, finding happiness where we least expected it as well as where we looked for it and constantly, constantly evolving as we move from order to the disorder that it takes to achieve true equilibrium.

So the next time you make a promise to yourself about how you want to react, what you expect from your hard work and then watch it go down in flames, just remember that it’s not just you….the whole universe is unraveling.

But it will work out in the end all the same.

The wrong side of the bed can be right

Silver Linings:
1. Missing my early train and finding the time to watch my son's favorite morning show with him.
2. A BLT sandwich with just 2 strips of bacon is as satisfying as the default 6.
3. A wonderful walk home from Oyon's school with his father yesterday. We took a differentr oute, stopped 100 times, examined every bug and fallen leaf, soaked up the failing rays of autumn sunshine and watched our little guy sing, dance and hop his gleeful way home. Small pleasures rule.

Oyon-isms:
While watching a cartoon about a  fish: "Wook, that's maach. Maach means fish in Bangla (Bangwa). I wish I had a pet maach."
Ans so the pet campaign begins...

Lessons Learnt:
The wrong side of the bed can be right 
That moment after waking up when your thoughts put out feelers for how the day will be, is crucial. You can chart the day before even opening your eyes by deciding how you will feel. A day started with dread can end in dread because you let it start as such.


Felt dismal upon awakening in the pre-dawn gloom at the thought of another frustrating, dissatisfying day ahead. Did some pranayama while huddled under my comforter and talked myself into emerging and smiling. At work, my stalled analysis freed itself. No dread and the faint gleam of success by 10 am. It only got better the rest of the day. You can get out of the wrong side of the bed but make it BE the right one, I guess

Foregone conclusions, aren't.

Silver Linings:
1. A happy family weekend spent just winging it. A breather from scheduled 'fun'.
2. Lunch outdoors in the sun with friends from work.
3. Successful inauguration of the potty (tho it looks like we might blow the diaper savings on potty bribes!)

Oyon-isms (new category):
1. Chasing a bee with a Dandelion bloom, yelling "Come drink your connector!"
2. On my whispering something to him in a restaurant, "You don't have to whisker Mamma, just use your indoor voice".

Lessons Learnt:
Forgone conclusions, aren't.
I firmly turned my back on sports as a child when my horrendous lack of coordination not only became evident but persisted beyond the rigorous efforts of PE teachers at school. Easier to reject than be rejected, especially at the age where your self-esteem is scrabbling for a foothold and being 'good' at things provides critical traction.
Two decades later in my 30s, those dispirited fogs of failure somehow rolled back just enough to make me first, re-mount a bicycle then, reach for a badminton racket. I should add that both efforts were significantly  effected by the subtle coaxing of an athletic husband who was undoubtedly chafing under the domestic limitations thrust upon our weekends by my foregone conclusions. My low expectations and desire to have some fun helped also to reach the shocking revelation that our abilities can quietly grow and outpace both Time and the mental barriers we put before them.
There's still nothing of an athlete in me but I surprise myself by wobbling along on short bike rides without incident, playing through beginners badminton games and at last nights 'Beginners Tennis' lesson, hitting more than missing. And ENJOYING it all.
Foregone conclusion, are'nt.

Dependable comforts

Silver Linings:
1. Sneak peek at a smartly dressed commuter's heels - peeking out through her holey socks!
2. Evidence that freinds are reading this blog. (Thanks for the comments!)
3. "Love....was'nt meant to provide immunity from fate or grief or pain....But what it does is throw us into the midst of life with the best intentions possible; give us courage, passion, hope.." from 'The Flirt' by Kathleen Tessaro.

Lessons Learnt:
Dependable comforts are good on bad days.
Spring allergies have been in the air and by mid-day yesterday my sinuses finally gave up the fight. Calling it quits and returning home at 2 pm was a smart move: a dark room and bed was smarter still and did much for the pounding head and aching eyes. Nicer still was letting hubby pick-up dinner/put O to bed etc. and turning to a rerun of 'Freinds' for some more relief. Dependable comforts are good on a bad day.

Honest self-appraisals

Silver Linings:
1. Curried cauliflower pie for dinner (tastes much better than it sounds).
2. Watching 'Castaway' in bed.
3. Sleeping in until 7:30 AM.

Lessons Learnt:
Honest self-appraisals, regardless of repurcussions.
The media has recently rallied around a 7 yr old adopted boy who was returned to his native Russia because of severe behavioral problems that they were previously unaware of. Discussing the responsibilities of parenthood with co-workers led me to articulate for the first time how important self-appraisals can be.

The popular opinion is that when you opt to parent (as adoptive parents do even more consciously than accidental, biological ones), you should be prepared for all the attendant challenges. Even the unexpected ones. My thought is that entry into parenthood should start with an honest self-appraisal of capabilities. Not everyone has the mental or physical resources to undertake challenges and pretending otherwise is by far more unfair to the child. These adoptive parents did not opt to parent a disturbed child: that they recognized their limits is a good thing in my book. That they reneged so completely on their promise for a better future for the child is however, a crime. In these times of media power, I find it hard to believe that there was no possibility of finding to find alternate custody for this child and spare him the trauma of rejection and the return to the dismal conditions he'd just left. I fault the parents in this piece of news for returning their child to Russia where prospects are limited....they should have looked harder for other options to deliver the better life they promised the child. But I do not fault them for balking at the prospect of parenting a difficult child.

I do not agree that the overriding problem with adoption or even with our collective societal outlook is that we’re too quick to quit. It's that we choose to live in denial and blunder about doing damage to everyone in the process. Isn’t it more important to actually do the right thing than just appear to be doing the right thing?

The lesser of 2 evils

Silver Linings:
1. Regrouting parts of the shower tiles. Something satisfying about creating neat, continous lines.
2. Hearing from a close friend after many years and re-discovering that familiar, almost forgotten voice. Nothing like old freinds to make you feel valued.
3. An unasked-for, half-asleep hug from hubby in the wee hours of the night as I tossed and turned in sleeplessness. Talk about feeling valued.

Lessons Learnt:
The lesser of two evils isn't that evil.
In a discussion that was quickly descending into a negative, pointless argument, pausing in silence for a few beats seemed to somewhat alter the outcome. Angry judgements were probably still made internally on all sides and the annoyance that inevitably accompanies a degenerated discussion, similarly harbored. But a period of tongue-biting silence (even a resentful one) seemed to help achieve a faster recovery back to civility. For better or for worse, a squabble was averted.

Well articulated disagreements between calm, receptive people might further the cause of mutual understanding but squabbling is a senseless knee-jerk reaction that can only add to dysfunction. Seldom is any insight gleaned from it while the accusatory, negative tone in the airing of mutual annoyance successfully cancels out any possible cathartic value.

Turning away from an argument (in a personal relationship) has always reeked of escapism and scared me with the potential for deep misunderstanding as motivations and meanings are unclarified by the one person, and misread by the other. It's beginning to dawn on me now that this sort of escapist silence has its virtues too. An unfiltered expressed of irritation possibly has a greater attritional effecton a relationship than the potential deepening of misunderstandings. This lesser of two evils is most likley far less 'evil' than I imagine it to be.

Suspended animation saps

Silver Linings:
1.  Playing a spelling game at 6:30 am (with 3.5 yr old O)
2.  Wearing sandals for the first time this year. Comfortable and an utterly happy red.
3.  Coffee without sugar. Something I thought I absolutely couldn't do without turns out to be entirely dispensable. What more am I capable of?

Lessons Learnt:
Suspended animation saps
This has been a week of difficult evenings. Hours of supposed freedom have passed like slow moving sludge and exuded a matching miasma. I'm guessing this is Tagore's 'dreary desert sand of dead habit'. Daily chores are inevitable and the accompanying suspension of thought is probably a move in self-preservation, but they need to be followed by some shaking-up at days end. A conscious re-framing of mood and thoughts so each of us can move out of our usual all-consuming roles and just Be. It's admittedly easier to slouch around inside the bubbles that our respective days create, succumbing to the lack of motivation or energy to emerge from it.
It's equally clear that this kind of suspended animation, saps. Next week, the effort will be to be mindful about shaping each evening.

Digging for true cause

Silver Linings:
1. Including today, I woke up on time 4 mornings in a row and fetched coffee for hubby instead of the other way around as is typical. MAJOR victory, considering my track record.
2. Crisp spring breeze and golden sunshine at 7:20 am while waiting for my train to work.
3. The morning news on public radio informs me that China might just adjust currency strength with positive repurcussions on US national loans to the country. Although I suspect this scenario is too good to hold true to the end, it's a positive note to focus on.
4. From 'Life of Pi' by Yann Martel:
I can well imagine an atheist's last words: "White, white! L-L-Love! My God!" - and the deathbed leap of faith. Whereas the agnostic, if he stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays beholden to dry, yeastless factuality, might try to explain the warm light bathing him by saying, 'Possibly a f-f-failng oxygenation of the b-b-brain," and, to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story. (p.64)

I don't think much of the book or his spiritual quests but this idea fits my views well. Not the derision of Agnosticism but the thought that voluntary excercising of your imagination can let you make choices that soften unavoidable realities as well as that bitter crust that develops on cynicism if allowed to develop unchecked. If your'e sure you can't change things, you can at least make them more palatable. It might sound like Denial, but let's call it "creative, selective truth" - a constructive tool when wielded in the right time and place.

Lessons learnt:
Unease about myself can lead to a subconscious invention of problems.
Case in point: felt guilty about an unhealthy breakfast yesterday morning and ended up feeling sulky about the evening being lonely and boring. Blamed my uninteresting life, introvert husband, chores and even spring allergies. In the clear light of day, it turns out none of the above were significant: I was just still feeling bad about my dietary trespass.

So the next time I'm internally (sometimes unknowingly) fretting about how sad I feel, I could dig a little deeper right then to articulate to myself why I'm sad. Then I should see if my reasons are valid. I might be able to avoid unnecessary blame-appointing and perhaps uncover a good day from under the muck I needlessly heaped on top of it.

Suspending, mid-flight

Silver linings:
1. Walked the mile to the commuter rail station for my daily commute. Revelled in how strong and alive my legs felt. I might be hosting  too many extra pounds and too little muscle tone but I have life left in me yet. Lots.
2. Thoroughly enjoyed listening to foot tapping numbers by ‘Bhoomi’ on my new mp3 player on the walk back home. I had forgotten about the restorative powers of a thought-erasing beat. (Thanks hubby)
3. The tarka daal for dinner tasted like real tarka so maybe I’ve finally nailed this fav recipe. (Thanks Indrani.)
4. Signed up for beginners tennis lessons. Have’nt learnt a new skill in a long time so this will be fun, no matter what my aptitude for the sport turns out to be.

Lessons learnt:
Negative thoughts can be suspended in mid-flight:
When my suggestion about a project was turned down in a coversation, I found myself immediately bristling and started finding derogatory reasons why the other person was shooting down my hard work and reasoning. I managed to suspend all thought on the matter at this moment of awareness and distracted myself with other things. When I revisited the issue the following morning in a calmer, clearer frame of mind, I was able to consider that he might have had other reasons other than a blinding bias against me and that my knee-jerk reaction was purely based on history, not any evidence from that day in particular. This is what happens when I let the past color instead of inform the present. Giving him the benefit of doubt felt far better than assuming the worst too.

Mistaken conclusion and negative memory averted.

Begin mindful of this entire thought/reaction process might be key in claiming  happiness. I need to ensure that I’m being fully reasonable and fair before demanding that from others.  Others need to be as mindful of me as I am of them, but the cycle needs to start with me. There's also the faint hope that if I am in better control of my own thoughts and reactions, it will come to matter less how others treat me. .

So my lesson learnt.....I may not be self aware enough to prevent negative thoughts and judgements from materialising altogether (yet) but can still stop them before they do much damage. That's almost a better power to have than averting negative thought altogether. If I can master this, I'm golden.

First post

I'm lucky to have insightful, thoughtful friends who have from time to time helped me defuse vision darkening despair.
- Dar reminded me that we each have to choose to be happy.
- ASub and Suj have encouraged me to catalogue positive events daily to counter the inevitable soul sucking and depression inducing ones.
- DoAlex has explained to me the critical difference between being responsible 'for' and 'to' others.
- Jay introduced me to the thought that I will attract the feelings I send out.
- Fi has shocked me with the idea that you have to be greedy for happiness to get it.
- Tammy has always demonstrated how you can 'just let it go'.
- V'ee, Sof and RaBa have always just helped me Be.

Doing all of the above publicly and bloggily (what a happy sounding word!) is my way of trying to stay this game. The posts will be banal at best and tediously introspective at worst so this is not a promise of entertainment. The hope is squeeze a few drops of light out of every day and while I’m at it, to glean some personal insight where possible.

If you've ever made fun of blogs where people post their breakfast menu, this is the time to surf away. Else read on and 'comment' away (and no self-editing please).

(And stay tuned for my other blog where I do my real thinking.)