Reinvention

A couple of things happened in the last few days to bring the topic of reinvention to my consciousness.  It started with Indiana Jones.

Yes, you read that right.  My life's epiphanies are precipitated by a fictional character in a fedora.  Well, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they are precipitated by my childhood crush!  But I digress...

Back to the topic at hand.  Harrison Ford was a crush of mine from the time I first saw Star Wars in the late seventies.  I loved the characters he played, and as I got older and learned more about him, I developed a respect for his craftsmanship and the down-to-earth way he lived in spite of his fame.  I also respected the fact that he was married to a woman who was not simply a bombshell, but had a vibrant career of her own and struck me as being his equal.  Then he had his "mid-life crisis".  He divorced his wife of some twenty-odd years, got his ear pierced and took up with Calista Flockhart.  I was devastated.

It seems weird, even to me, to be upset with the life changes of someone I don't know, so I can't imagine what it would be like to have someone important and intimate in your life make those kinds of changes.  But my crush on him was something that helped define me, so when he changed, it left me feeling unsettled.

Early in the week we went to the funeral of a friend's mother.  She did the same thing as Harrison Ford.  Although she wasn't a famous Hollywood star, in her fifties or early sixties she decided to divorce, change her name and live a different life.  Then a few days later I was at work and struck up a conversation with one of the teachers at the school I work at.  She spent many years in a loveless marriage for the sake of her children and had recently divorced her husband and moved halfway across the country to start over.  Her adult children were sad about the changes she had made and didn't want to visit her in her new life.  They were deeply affected by her decision.

What these women did took courage.  Immense courage. To do what they felt was best for them in spite of other's reservations.  So I applauded them.   It was easy to do that because I wasn't personally affected by their decisions.

Generally speaking as people, we dislike change.  When someone close to us decides to change their life, it affects us.  Their presence in our lives helps to define who we are, and if they change, then we have to adapt and adjust as well.  It's not always easy, but I think that accepting people for who they are and allowing them to grow and change is a real gift.

After hearing the stories of these women and giving it some thought, I've realized that change takes courage and that it's not up to me to insist that everyone stay the same just so I don't have to deal with it.  This brings me back around to Harrison Ford and I'd like to leave you all with this quote by the man himself.

"I am not the first man who wanted to make changes in his life at 60 and I won't be the last. It is just that others can do it with anonymity. I was interested in changing my life. I have always had the ability to change and become other people through my acting. I took a good look at myself and decided I wanted something different from the way I was living. That's not such a bad thing, is it? But, because of my past, I think it took a lot of people by surprise. They wondered what was happening to me. I was very much aware of what was happening. I'm living the way I want to live."

I'm smiling and shaking my head as I write this because I realize how ridiculous it sounds, but Mr. Ford - I forgive you.

Authenticity

A couple of weeks ago I sent a link to my blog to a friend of mine who is an accomplished writer.  He is a former magazine editor and an acclaimed author of two books.  I asked him for his feedback and although he gave me a positive critique, this is the part that stuck in my head.  He said that it was obvious that I writing for myself, and that was fine, but writing for an audience was a different thing.  Which got me to thinking.  Who am I writing for, and why?

When I was singing regularly, I did it for others.  Of course I did it for myself too, but deep down inside I felt that I had been so lucky to have been blessed with such a gift and the opportunities to develop it, and that I was obligated to share it with the world.  I really didn't allow myself to enjoy it fully for it's own sake - only for what it gave to others.  That made me dependent on their praise for my own fulfillment.  Perhaps these are some of the reasons that my singing career never really took off.

I started writing this blog as a place to explore my thoughts and get down some of the things I was dealing with.  It wasn't intended as a forum for teaching others how to live.  I'm finding some of my own answers but I haven't got them for others.  If you enjoy my writing, I'm happy.  If you connect to what I'm saying, I'm thrilled.  If you are learning something from it, I am humbled.  But who am I writing it for?  Well, as much as it pains me to say it, my friend is right.  I'm writing for myself.

That's an incredibly hard thing for me to admit.  It feels so incredibly selfish and self-centred it makes me cringe.  It makes me immediately want to say "no, no! I'm writing it all for you!  Please don't think I'm selfish!"  But if I am only trying to guess what people would like to read, does that do anyone any good?  Is that authentic?  Is it real? 

I think it's like the oxygen masks on an airplane.  You have to put your own on first before helping others.  If I can claim my voice for myself and write from my experience and my heart without obsessing about what others will think of it, it will be authentic and true and it will be mine to share. 

Not resisting

The question yesterday was how to deal with your own mind.  How to alter your thoughts to something better. 


Today's musings are about how to help someone else do it. 

I have a twelve year old daughter.  Yesterday was not a good day for her.  Without getting into details, let's just say that she came home in a foul mood.

When it was time to do homework, this mood had not abated.  The homework intensified the frustration and anger she felt.  So as a parent, I know that getting the homework done is important.  I have also learned that suppressing emotions is generally not a good thing.  Sometimes you have to hold them in until you're in a safe place to let them out, but bottling them up indefinitely is something I believe is very unhealthy.   

My first instinct was to tell her to buckle down and get it done, which is what I did.  Git 'er done, put your nose to the grindstone, stiff upper lip and all that stuff.  How successful do you think I was?

Well, I'll tell you.  Not very.  We argued.  I pushed her to stuff it down and work, and she pushed back.  The big emotions she was feeling needed to come out.  It was not a pretty sight.

Then I had a moment of inspiration.  I set the timer on the microwave for one minute and told her to go downstairs and beat up the punching bag until the timer went off.  She spent at least five minutes beating the stuffing out of that bag, but when she was finished, she apologized for her behaviour and the homework was done in about two minutes with no tears, no anger, no power struggles.

The lesson here?  By allowing her to have her feelings and making home that safe place to express them, she was able to move through them and then move on.

I wish I could say that I am certain I will do the same every time I am faced with a similar situation, or that I'm confident that I will always catch myself feeding my side of a power struggle.  I'm sure I won't.  I think the lesson here, for me, was in not resisting.  By letting the feelings just be and moving through them, their power was greatly diminished.  Now where else can I apply this?  I think that's a blog for another day! 

Changing your mind

Do you have certain thoughts that plague you?  Do you find yourself fixating on the same scenarios over and over?  I do.

Usually they are thoughts of lack.  Not enough.  Can't.  Won't be able to. 

Or alternately, I'll have to.  

As an artist I have become familiar with these thoughts and should know by now that they aren't real.  They are figments of my imagination.  But yet, they are so addictive.  And potent.  They are seductive and make me believe that this time they're real.  This time that disaster really will happen, because I've managed to prevent it all those other times.  Oddly enough that doesn't lead me to believe I can handle it, nooooo, it insists that this is the time that my luck is going to finally run out. 

Although I can't say for certain, if I were a betting woman, I'd bet that everyone has these kinds of thoughts from time to time.  And you know what I think about them?  I think that the trick isn't to not ever have them, the trick is, how to manage them.

I don't claim to be an expert at this, but I'm learning. 

I had one of those moments today.  I had too much coffee and I was feeling a lot of anxiety about money.  Always money.  And for no real good reason.  So I called a friend. After I hung up the phone, I felt worse because I knew that it was the same old song and dance, and they've heard it a billion times.  So I cleaned my fridge.  (That's kind of an interesting way to deal with your psychological problems right?)  Well, I can't say it helped me, but after wallowing in my frustration and anxiety for a while, I decided to take action.  First, I started by looking for a job.  Just a regular, run of the mill, j-o-b.  Did it help?  Nope.  It made me depressed to think that with the amount of education and life experience I have gleaned I would be reduced to some of the things I was looking at.  And then inspiration hit. 

Screw you negativity!  Take THAT you negative thoughts.  I am worthy.  I can do it.   I will do it.  I am enough, I have enough, and I can make a change. 

So what has really changed here?  Did I suddenly come up with a brilliant idea that will make me a mint in the next 24 hours?  Nope.  The only thing different here is my mind.  I decided to change it.  I didn't like feeling powerless so I embraced my power.  I sat down here and wrote about it and in the process I transformed those feelings of anxiety and powerlessness into something different.  And now, I feel like I can tackle the world.

So I leave you with this question.  What does it take for you to change your  mind?

A troll trying to get my goat

I am currently engaged in a debate on Facebook over the new minimum wage structure that the Alberta Government has implemented.  The gentleman that I am in discussion with is of the opinion that $9/hr should sufficient to keep a family afloat.  I disagree.  We have been debating back and forth for most of the day.  Pretty interesting but there's one problem.  He's a troll. 

According to Wikipedia, a troll is defined as "someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion."

The conversation started off very diplomatically.  I was truly interested in hearing what he had to say and why he believed that this wage was sufficient.  I challenged him with some questions.  He answered them - well, he answered some of them.  I asked again and thanked him for his response.  He respectfully replied.  I'm thinking - "this is great!  This kind of dialogue is what's lacking in Canadian politics today.  I love this!"  And then.... it started getting ugly.

He started to insult me, and others that are questioning him.  He told one woman (who identified herself as a teacher) that "Teachers are overpaid.... in university all the kids that can't hack anything over a B run to education to find a good paying job."  Not nice.

Not only is it not nice, but he is essentially trying to shut down any real dialogue.  I find this utterly appalling.  

I don't believe that everyone has to think the way I do but I am disgusted by the lack of courtesy and respect that I see in politics in this country.  Canadians are being constantly exposed to this toxic political atmosphere so it's no wonder people are feeling disenchanted with the whole thing.  Why speak up if you're going to be bullied?


So here I sit, trying to decide how I will respond.  Knowing that he is deliberately trying to provoke people and "get their goats".  Do I take the bait?  Do I continue to press him to answer the questions I've posed to see if he can?  Or do I stop wasting my energy?


Or perhaps I should simply point out his lack of courtesy and ask him to stick to the issues.  What do you think?
 

Valuable skills and arts education

Today I went on a field trip with my daughter to the St. Albert Children's Festival.  We saw a performance this afternoon by a circus troupe that totally blew my mind.  As a performer, I was thrilled by the theatricality and showmanship of some of the performances, but beyond that I was in awe of some of the skills these people possessed.  And I'm not talking their physical prowess.  That was undeniable.  These people were incredible athletes.  I'm talking about their mental skills.  Skills that we say we value in our society, but do we?

One of my favorite acts was a man and a woman doing acrobatics.  She was being held in a variety of lifts in incredibly difficult positions - sometimes balancing on only one hand.  From this position, the man lowered himself to the floor and while continuing to balance her, would somehow tuck his legs through his arms and do a roll.  It was absolutely breathtaking.  The thing that I liked the most about this act was the communication and trust in this relationship.  There was nothing said, but they were so closely tuned into each others bodies and energies.  They had to be.  To top it off, they did it all with smiles on their faces and with a great deal of flair.  I was so impressed.

These performers were disciplined, strong, courageous and had incredible focus.  They were performing amazing physical feats that required immense concentration in front of a theatre full of noisy and excited children, and they didn't miss a step. How many people can say that of themselves?

This is the value of an arts education, and this is what the arts can teach us all.  These skills are invaluable in our society.  Focus.  Discipline.  Courage.  Communication.  Trust.  Concentration.     


Now remind me again why the arts and arts education are not valuable?