Hello Dearest Blog Followers -
I'm going camping! Looking forward to the Memorial Day Expedition with my son and extended posse. Am not sure where where camping or how we are camping - might be base camping or could end up primitive camping, which makes for a challenge when my gear's not been in service for nigh on 8 years. Still and all, it's really just a matter of remembering what you know and locating the proper resources to make it work.
Late last night I came across a picture of myself from relatively happier times. I'd actually been avoiding looking at pictures from that period of my life, but last night I did and discovered that it was really okay. I changed my profile picture on FB to one of those pictures, because it's a reminder that there's a baseline of happiness I had and that it's simply a matter of getting back to that baseline. The baseline of happiness isn't contingent on things being in their proper place in my life, or knowing what to expect, much like this upcoming camping trip. It's really a matter of what I know about myself and what I know is absolutely required for the journey, in either case.
That being said, some things you learn from experience you can just do without, even when you've customarily relied upon them. This came to me as I was inventorying my gear. I've got 5 of us going and only 4 sleeping bags currently. I scoped around to see if I can borrow one, and if I can, that's great. But if not, I know that I can do without, as I've done it before.
I was on a coastal kayaking wilderness trip about 4 yrs ago with a group of teens, and later into the night, we discovered one of the teens misplaced her gear. If you've ever been coastal kayaking and carrying camping gear, you know that when the tides change and the sun goes down, it's almost impossible to get into the kayaks to find things. It was quite a frustrating experience for our team, and while I wasn't the lead, I decided to step up and offer mine. It wouldn't get below 50 degrees and with enough layers, I knew I'd be fine. And I was.
Now, if you'd asked me, would you ever just go out there and sleep without a sleeping bag prior to this experience, I'd have said no. Yet circumstances lent themselves to me learning something new. Life can be like that sometimes. The things we rely upon aren't always the things we have available to us, and we've got to step up and try something different.
On another trip I was on, we got lost in a national forest. I didn't really know much to speak of that would be of help to our leads, but I knew some things about not knowing what direction to take, as it had happened in my life. Sometimes it happens on a physical terrain, other times on a mental one. From those experiences, I knew that the most important thing would be to stay calm and calm others. When you're afraid, it interferes with your thinking process. So I offered that to our leads and it all worked out fine.
The newest part about both this phase in my life and the actual camping trip we're going on is that in both cases, I'm the lead. It's going to be up to me to know certain things and make some decisions and assume responsibility for when things don't work out. I am grateful for the experiences I had in the past, both in wilderness and in life, as these potentially can serve me well in these new endeavors.
Showing posts with label life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label life. Show all posts
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Sunday, April 11, 2010
The Jungle, and a Life of Meaning
Some of my family worked in the Chicago Stockyards, back around the turn of the last century. They slaughtered the hogs, worked in unsanitary conditions, and one of them died there in a horrible accident.
As a young person, maybe 13, they gave us The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, to read. It characterized what some of my ancestors went through, and was written by an activist, hoping to draw awareness to the conditions. Upton Sinclair became my de facto hero. He opened up a whole world to me, both in terms of understanding where we came from and lived through, and also, where we draw our power...
Here's one of my favorite passages from The Jungle:
"It is very imprudent, it is tragic – but, ah, it is so beautiful! Bit by bit these poor people have given up everything else; but to this they cling with all the power of their souls – they cannot give up the veselija! To do that would mean, not merely to be defeated, but to acknowledge defeat – and the difference between these two things is what keeps the world going. The veselija has come down to them from a far-off time; and the meaning of it was that one might dwell within the cave and gaze upon shadows, provided only that once in his lifetime he could break his chains, and feel his wings, and behold the sun; provided that once in his lifetime he might testify to the fact that life, with all its cares and its terrors, is no such great thing after all, but merely a bubble upon the surface of a river, a thing that one may toss about and play with as a juggler tosses his golden balls, a thing that one may quaff, like a goblet of rare red wine. Thus having known himself for the master of things, a man could go back to his toil and live upon the memory all his days."
I'm looking at that passage now, and thinking of how it might relate to me (or any one of us) today. The Veselija in the passage was a traditional Lithuanian wedding feast, and so Sinclair is talking about celebration and tradition.
If, in our times of greatest oppression or sorrow, we lose our ability to celebrate using our traditions, we have lost it all. He talks of the difference between defeat and acknowledging defeat. We can, on all counts, be defeated, but if we acknowledge it, we may well lose everything. Life being no great thing at all, seems to me to mean more precisely that the struggles we encounter in life are really no great thing at all, despite how we may feel about them.
He speaks of traditions, that allow us to return to the flow of life, having simply lived it through celebration. Rejecting the acknowledgement of defeat, it seems to me is to be taking one's power back.
For example, if you have a terrible situation that you are in, it can create tunnel vision, where all that you can see is the bad that is happening or has happened. Over time, the bad begins to define your experience and perhaps even your life. In doing so, it takes the power from you, the power to be happy, to have a sense of peace, contentment and wholeness about you. Soon, all perspective is lost.
If instead, you turn back to said terrible situation and refused to allow it to define you any longer, refused to acknowledge defeat, you might find yourself celebrating the everyday moments, or even the special traditions of your respective culture.
Not everything has to be a wedding feast - we can find the daily moments, or we can find the special traditions and enact them. Doing this defies the concept of defeat. Cling to this with all the power of your soul! Celebrate using your traditions!
So, I'm going to do the happy dance of being a traditional Cherokee woman, knowing our power, and laughing in the face of such supposed big, scary things that life waves before my face. Not that we actually have a happy dance, but I feel empowered to make one up. Regardless, in my celebration, I am going to embrace what it means to be me, and revel in it with abandon!
How about you? What are YOU going to do?
As a young person, maybe 13, they gave us The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, to read. It characterized what some of my ancestors went through, and was written by an activist, hoping to draw awareness to the conditions. Upton Sinclair became my de facto hero. He opened up a whole world to me, both in terms of understanding where we came from and lived through, and also, where we draw our power...
Here's one of my favorite passages from The Jungle:
"It is very imprudent, it is tragic – but, ah, it is so beautiful! Bit by bit these poor people have given up everything else; but to this they cling with all the power of their souls – they cannot give up the veselija! To do that would mean, not merely to be defeated, but to acknowledge defeat – and the difference between these two things is what keeps the world going. The veselija has come down to them from a far-off time; and the meaning of it was that one might dwell within the cave and gaze upon shadows, provided only that once in his lifetime he could break his chains, and feel his wings, and behold the sun; provided that once in his lifetime he might testify to the fact that life, with all its cares and its terrors, is no such great thing after all, but merely a bubble upon the surface of a river, a thing that one may toss about and play with as a juggler tosses his golden balls, a thing that one may quaff, like a goblet of rare red wine. Thus having known himself for the master of things, a man could go back to his toil and live upon the memory all his days."
I'm looking at that passage now, and thinking of how it might relate to me (or any one of us) today. The Veselija in the passage was a traditional Lithuanian wedding feast, and so Sinclair is talking about celebration and tradition.
If, in our times of greatest oppression or sorrow, we lose our ability to celebrate using our traditions, we have lost it all. He talks of the difference between defeat and acknowledging defeat. We can, on all counts, be defeated, but if we acknowledge it, we may well lose everything. Life being no great thing at all, seems to me to mean more precisely that the struggles we encounter in life are really no great thing at all, despite how we may feel about them.
He speaks of traditions, that allow us to return to the flow of life, having simply lived it through celebration. Rejecting the acknowledgement of defeat, it seems to me is to be taking one's power back.
For example, if you have a terrible situation that you are in, it can create tunnel vision, where all that you can see is the bad that is happening or has happened. Over time, the bad begins to define your experience and perhaps even your life. In doing so, it takes the power from you, the power to be happy, to have a sense of peace, contentment and wholeness about you. Soon, all perspective is lost.
If instead, you turn back to said terrible situation and refused to allow it to define you any longer, refused to acknowledge defeat, you might find yourself celebrating the everyday moments, or even the special traditions of your respective culture.
Not everything has to be a wedding feast - we can find the daily moments, or we can find the special traditions and enact them. Doing this defies the concept of defeat. Cling to this with all the power of your soul! Celebrate using your traditions!
So, I'm going to do the happy dance of being a traditional Cherokee woman, knowing our power, and laughing in the face of such supposed big, scary things that life waves before my face. Not that we actually have a happy dance, but I feel empowered to make one up. Regardless, in my celebration, I am going to embrace what it means to be me, and revel in it with abandon!
How about you? What are YOU going to do?
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
The Gambler
It's been awhile since I posted on my blog, due to some major life shifts I needed to embark on that have taken up a lot of my emotional energy. It's been great, from the point of view of having first hand emotional experiences to use in my future writing, and rough in all other ways.
I had an excellent session tonight with my favorite Jungian analyst. He got me to realize that the bleak future I'd been envisioning for myself going forward may play out an entirely different way. In fact, I think he used those exact words. Something in that got me to thinking, and of course, that's always a dangerous thing!
My thoughts took me to the idea of poker, of life being more or less a gamble. As of late, I've been challenged by the idea that people think I'm bluffing when I'm not. With the idea of things playing out, gambling and the idea of a bluff, I came to the point of remembering Kenny Rogers song, "The Gambler."
That song came out when I was around 12 years old. It's an easy enough song to memorize, and so at the time, being 12 and having little else to do with my time, I did. It was something more than a song for me, because unlike most 12 year olds, I was in the unique position of having been taught to play poker at the age of 5. My mother had wanted me to be a casino dealer, her great aspiration for me. When you learn to play poker before you enter school, it really does something to your mindset. I learned to calculate the odds of things, understand the idea of risk, and firmly understood the game.
I know how to bluff, and I know what to gamble. I even know how to set a deck up in my favor. These skills developed at such an early age no doubt account for my success in life. I never did become a casino dealer, nor had any desire to be one, but I took something more from the lesson and applied it to my life.
Insofar as it applies to the song, the parts that resonate most for me are this:
"If you're going to play the game, boy, you've got to learn to play it right...
...Every gambler knows that the secret to surviving is knowing what to throw away, and knowing what to keep, because every hand's a winner, and every hand's a loser and the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep."
It's really about knowing what to expect from the game, and understanding (as a metaphor for life) that it's not about the cards you're dealt, it's about how you play them that makes a difference. Any and every hand we are dealt can be a winner or a loser, depending upon what we make of it. It's not one of those glass half empty or half full metaphors that speak only to perspective. It's more about how a person decides to use what they've got in front of them, and making the best of it.
That really helped a lot. I've been dealt a hand I didn't expect, knew what to let go of, but until tonight, I hadn't realized there are some keeper cards in my hand, that will serve me well in how things play out in the future.
It's nice to be thinking this way, at least for tonight!
I had an excellent session tonight with my favorite Jungian analyst. He got me to realize that the bleak future I'd been envisioning for myself going forward may play out an entirely different way. In fact, I think he used those exact words. Something in that got me to thinking, and of course, that's always a dangerous thing!
My thoughts took me to the idea of poker, of life being more or less a gamble. As of late, I've been challenged by the idea that people think I'm bluffing when I'm not. With the idea of things playing out, gambling and the idea of a bluff, I came to the point of remembering Kenny Rogers song, "The Gambler."
That song came out when I was around 12 years old. It's an easy enough song to memorize, and so at the time, being 12 and having little else to do with my time, I did. It was something more than a song for me, because unlike most 12 year olds, I was in the unique position of having been taught to play poker at the age of 5. My mother had wanted me to be a casino dealer, her great aspiration for me. When you learn to play poker before you enter school, it really does something to your mindset. I learned to calculate the odds of things, understand the idea of risk, and firmly understood the game.
I know how to bluff, and I know what to gamble. I even know how to set a deck up in my favor. These skills developed at such an early age no doubt account for my success in life. I never did become a casino dealer, nor had any desire to be one, but I took something more from the lesson and applied it to my life.
Insofar as it applies to the song, the parts that resonate most for me are this:
"If you're going to play the game, boy, you've got to learn to play it right...
...Every gambler knows that the secret to surviving is knowing what to throw away, and knowing what to keep, because every hand's a winner, and every hand's a loser and the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep."
It's really about knowing what to expect from the game, and understanding (as a metaphor for life) that it's not about the cards you're dealt, it's about how you play them that makes a difference. Any and every hand we are dealt can be a winner or a loser, depending upon what we make of it. It's not one of those glass half empty or half full metaphors that speak only to perspective. It's more about how a person decides to use what they've got in front of them, and making the best of it.
That really helped a lot. I've been dealt a hand I didn't expect, knew what to let go of, but until tonight, I hadn't realized there are some keeper cards in my hand, that will serve me well in how things play out in the future.
It's nice to be thinking this way, at least for tonight!
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