Dad owned the tearoom near the top of Blackburn Road next to the Dutch Reformed Church up the road from Park Hill Soccer Club.
You may or not have known him by name but you may have been a woman in need of milk for her baby. He would have given it to you “under the counter” as if defying the boss which, of course, was himself. When you tried to pay he may have whispered “take the milk, my dear. No baby should go without food. Keep your money for something else the baby needs.”
Or, you may have wandered into the shop and said you had no place to stay for a while and he may have said “we have plenty of room here” and given you a bed for a week, a month, even longer.
Perhaps you knew him because you faced addiction to alcohol and he was your Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor and he said “just for today” to you and told you he’d decided he’d no longer drink “just for today” until his pledge spanned decades of sobriety.
Did you know my dad?
You may not have known him by name but perhaps you went to his tearoom where he served bread, milk, kindness and good humor and wrapped the goods with the feeling that you were known, you belonged, you were important.
Do you, and are you able to, zoom in and zoom out?
If you are able to zoom out – see the larger and objective picture of what it means to be you – and zoom in – to take care of immediate day-to-day matters – you’re probably doing rather well.
Do you, and are you able to zoom back and zoom ahead?
If you are able to zoom back and consider how your past has shaped you and zoom ahead and enjoy your hopes and dreams for your future – you are surely doing well.
It’s becoming stuck in one or the other – usually the past, or the future – and making the present unmanageable things can become problematic. Appreciating how the past and a vision for the future simultaneously significantly give shape to the immediate suggests wholeness and wellness.
Do you, are you able to zoom deeply within?
If you are able to search your inner-core – head, heart, soul, motivations – and then with humility and thanks, encounter and acknowledge your beauty, you are doing well. If you are able to embrace your inner-person despite your flaws and failures, and allow yourself to encourage others even when you yourself are under trying circumstances – I’d suggest you are of sound mind.
Do you, and are you able to zoom in on others?
If you are able to focus on the people with whom you share life – day-to-day platonic kindnesses – and the people whom you deeply love, and really listen to them – and you are able to appreciate their uniqueness, their beauty, and permit everything about them – both groups – to teach you what you don’t know about love and self-awareness – you are in tip-top mental health.
I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world.
You might not be able to move mountains, but you can move part of one for someone, even if it is handful of rocks and stones and a shovel or two of hindrances.
Might not be able to turn water into wine, but you can offer sustaining food and beverage to someone who is in desperate need of recognition and who also may be hungry.
You cannot raise the dead but you can bring enthusiasm and enliven someone’s day with your call, your card, your good wishes, your loving thoughts expressed directly to him or her.
You probably cannot restore hearing to the deaf or sight to the blind, but you are able to listen even to the most desperate attempt to communicate with you, and you are able to see the person who might never have been truly seen.
You may not feel overly empowered to make a significant difference in your immediate environment, but you can forgive those who have hurt you and set free those whom you believe may owe you something, and makes a huge difference in their lives.
You’re probably not set up to bring peace to conflicting world powers but you are capable of living in peace with your neighbors.
It’s no secret that many men avoid deeper intimacy with other men. I suggest it would be helpful for men to form intentional support “MWE groups” or “Men Without Egos.”
While “WWW” for “Women Without Walls” is not original, I did come up with MWE.
Here are some guidelines to establish such a group:
1. Meet for a decided period of time, say monthly for 10 months, and for two hours. Begin by phoning and inviting 9 or 10 men you already somewhat know. This act makes you the facilitator.
2. Try to create a group that is diverse with age, race, and belief. I’d suggest every group have at least two members who are from different generations in the same family.
3. You may not discuss your career, achievements, sport, or politics.
4. Read a book together and talk about it for at least 15 minutes of each meeting. I’d suggest you begin with David Scharch’s Passionate Marriage which will challenge every aspect of every relationship you have.
5. Laugh a lot, cry sometimes, listen more than you talk, and call each other between meetings, and never discuss someone not present (not even your wife).
As well-intentioned as we may be in desiring to avoid conflict and “keep the peace,” we create more problems we must face later by running or playing hide and seek. Then, when we do face matters, we’re not the people we once were.
Avoidance is a quick-change artist! It changes us in ways we are likely to regret.
We cannot solve or improve what we will not face. Denial gets us no place worthy of the journey or the unintended, unwanted destination. Until we gather the courage to look difficult situations directly in the eye and expedite what is necessary to face the difficulties, conflicts will stay as they are and they’re likely to deteriorate.
What we avoid shapes us in ways we may never notice. We modify our habits in order to sustain our denial and avoidance. We change our friendships in order to sustain our patterns. We go out of our way to keep the peace but the new path is one to further avoidance. Our defensive habits defend us in unhealthy and unhelpful ways and make us into people we’d rather not be.
Avoidance of necessary battles creates unintended distance from others — even those we truly love.
There is no worthwhile substitute for early honest approaches to family or business conflicts.
Avoidance makes the heart grow harder.
Ours.
I enjoyed this side-walk art…… 49th and Penn in Meridian Kessler, Indianapolis
I shall strive to speak and teach as one who has indeed much to learn.
In every classroom we are all learners.
I shall strive to listen to people in the class (and out of it) as if I were listening to the mountains.
Mountains reveal their real beauty to the dedicated observer, beauty that’s easily missed by those who offer casual hurried glances or who are themselves caught up in how they look or are dressed or what the student may think of them.
Can there be a greater privilege than jetting to Penang to teach Family Systems?
What is office or church or family gossip really about?
Why do people do it?
I am not referring to the content, the messy details.
Some people “enjoy” or feel the need and cannot resist speaking about others in degrading terms.
The gossiper does this because he or she feels uncomfortable with you – yes, the one to whom he or she unloads the gossip.
Sharing juicy details about an absent person gives the speaker a sense of importance, a feel of being in on something with you, closer to you than you really are, a false sense of intimacy. You have been verbally trapped in a toxic, harmful manner.
You are “in the middle” and the gossiper has the sense that you two are close and the victim is on the “outside.”
Gossip is never glue. Gossip never leads to deeper friendships.
Want out?
Try:
“Have you talked directly to him about what you are telling me?”
“Why are you talking to me about someone who is not here to speak for herself?”
“What’s wrong with our friendship that you think I will join you in gossip?”
“If you can talk this way about her when she’s not here, I wonder how you talk about me when I am not around?”
Do you have a pencil and paper and an hour or two to do yourself a huge favor?
Mental health, getting healthier, than you already may be will require determined effort. Here are some questions to consider and things worth doing to stimulate yourself toward greater or higher functioning than you currently enjoy….
What do you want? What kind of person do you want to be? What are you going to do with your life?
Take a few months to answer the 3 above questions in written form.
Review your responses and update it regularly. Things change, we change, life has quite a different look as we go from stage to stage and age to age.
Become an expert in your behavior – not your wife’s or husband’s or children’s, or in-laws’ – and focus solely upon improving your level of functioning within your many areas of involvement and influence.
Try to get “above” all of your important networks and entanglements in order to think them through.
Try to act upon your insights so you have greater freedom in each of your relationships.
As you are thinking things through, take no sides with or against anyone. Have no victims to blame and create no heroes.
If you do all this with a few pieces of lined paper you will ultimately participate in writing yourself towards greater wellness.
A note to single or solo parents OR things i am still learning…..
Your children, from babies and all the way up to off to university or marriage, want you to be fearless or at least honest about not being fearless at times when you are not.
Your children have little or no interest in what brought you to this joyful privilege of single or solo parenting and certainly will reap no benefit if you are carrying guilt or shame for what brought you to this honored place.
Your children are going to regard what you have as normal, as the way life is supposed to be, so get comfortable with your family as it is and play it to the full.
Your children are capable of much but not of meeting your needs for adult companionship or easing your loneliness and to expect that from your children is more than unfair.
You children want to feel safe and have fun and engage in story-telling and lots of play and lots of eye contact with you. Hold off on all manner of screen-sitting for as long as possible.
Your children are not a means to complete your unfinished or unhappy childhood. This is their turn and parenting is the ultimate adult challenge.
difficultrelationships.com 