You don’t have to jump every hurdle

Have you ever compared your daily life experience to jumping hurdles on a track? People, horses, and dogs are some of the beings who compete to show how well they can manage it. In the track of life, each day is a hurdle and we have the idea that we have to jump it, we have to beat it, we have to be perfect or the best, we have to have all the answers. But what if we don’t have to jump the hurdles? What if we can walk around them or step under them? It doesn’t mean we don’t deal with them, we just do so from a place of power where we are. Some days, we can only manage walking around them and that’s okay.

As an observer, think of a day when you had a big challenge. You don’t need to become emotionally entangled in it, because that day was probably challenging enough, but if you remember that day now that you have some distance from it, one of two things happened. Number one, it was successful and everything went well, possibly better than you expected. Number two, it went differently than you planned or anticipated. But now it’s past and hopefully you learned from it. And the experience that loomed so enormously before you is a memory. You can be proud of yourself for getting past it, regardless of how it turned out. It’s one of those experiences you lived through.

The key is you got through it, you’re not still there going over it and over it. If you are punishing yourself in this way, let go. Walk around the hurdle, step under the hurdle, stop trying to jump over it. If you insist on going over it, step up to it, put one leg over and then the other. Whatever you have to do, move past the hurdle and go on to the next one. As you look forward and ahead, you can see the hurdles approaching and you can make judgment calls about how you will move past them. Do you have enough momentum going that you can jump over them with ease? Or do you need to pace yourself and proceed from a different angle, a different approach?

Whatever the hurdles before us, we can only manage them one by one. You cannot jump all the hurdles at once. No track runner would ever try that, because they know it wouldn’t work. Depending on how the hurdles are spaced, they might be able to handle two or three, but not all of the hurdles on the track at once. They are successful because they practice. They get up when they fall down. They get themselves prepared through training and exercise and diet and rest and listening to the right messages to help them stay focused. They practice by jumping over the lowest hurdles first, then as they become more adept, they raise the bar higher. When that becomes easier, they raise it higher still.

This is perfect example of how we can meet our daily hurdles. We prepare ourselves through training and exercise, using the tools available to us such as prayer, meditation, contemplation, compassion, unconditional love, forgiveness, etc. We can use diet and rest to help us be healthy and strong. We can listen to the right messages by making sure that what we are hearing is beneficial to us. We avoid gossip. We avoid fear mongering. We avoid messages that steal our energy. Sometimes we have to say no, even when it’s difficult. Just as the track runner doesn’t allow distractions to prevent him or her from being able to run their race, we stay focused and mind our own business and take care of what we need to do. Do we help others when we can? Of course. But each person’s race is their own, and no one should take it upon themselves to tell the others how to run theirs. If you ask for advice, use what you can and let go of what doesn’t work for you. If someone asks you for advice, give them the best you have and then don’t judge them for their choices.

Whatever hurdles are before you, face them with courage and from a place of Faith and knowing that your strength comes from your trust in God or Source or the Creator and following that guidance with right action. Allow the Energy that creates worlds and that flows through you to guide you and to help you jump your hurdles, walk around your hurdles, or walk beneath them. Start low and build up as you become stronger, smarter, and more confident in yourself. And may you have the wisdom to know which method to use for the best possible outcome for all concerned.

Before you know it, you’ll be making it look easy.

(clipart image by Freepik)

The Winds of Giving / Unseen Influences

I started to write this for my Give It Away Wednesday post for May 8, 2024, at our Grace in Giving group on Facebook, but it evolved into a bigger idea than just observing grass blowing in the wind or the idea of unseen influences affecting our Giving so I decided to give it space here as well.

(Visit Grace in Giving here: https://m.facebook.com/groups/250882548369824/?ref=share&mibextid=1vaBw1)

Contemplating the blowing grass outside my window now that the sun is shining on it (written on a post-storm sunny Tuesday afternoon before a stormy Give It Away Wednesday), it obviously needs mowing, but the ground is saturated, so the grass is taking advantage and shooting up, energized by the nourishment of soaking rains and drawing sun before the tornadic spin of steel blades come and cut them at their dancing shins.

As I watch the waving green stems of mixed variation going to seed, they appear to be dancing. Since I can’t see the physical force that is moving them, do they have a mind of their own and are simply rejoicing from their tender but sturdy roots in the bright air and sky? Or are unseen influences causing them to behave this way?

Ever since I first read of Abbie Deal’s experiences of settling on the Nebraska prairie with her new husband Will (A Lantern in Her Hand by Bess Streeter Aldrich), I have always remembered Abbie’s description of the landscape as she described the waves of grass-covered plains blowing in the endless wind – roll, wave, ripple, dip – roll, wave, ripple, dip. She didn’t like the treeless flat land, which eventually led her to plant the Lombardy poplars lining the path from the road to her home that became sort of a signature of their property referenced frequently in the text.

Okay, fine, but what does this have to do with Giving and Gratitude?

The unseen wind blows across the grass, across the land and all that is sitting upon it. Mother Earth gives everything needed to sustain the planet – air, water, wind, and even fire. The sun and dirt give nutrients to vegetation and the vegetation gives to the wildlife and the wildlife often gives its life to human. The human uses all of these resources for survival. It’s a cycle on the higher plane of Giving and Receiving. At the end of the cycle, it all goes back to its origin. Circle of Life.

Reviews of the book speak volumes to all that Abbie Deal gave. First, she gave up her personal dreams, but she gained a family and helped create a new community in a foundling state. Readers express the depth of impression the book placed on their hearts because of Abbie’s giving nature, and her importance in her family as Mother and Grandmother, which she probably never fully comprehended as significant outside of herself. The poignancy of Aldrich’s writing is memorable.

We make choices in life about where we will live, what work we will devote ourselves to, and with whom we will associate in creating families, friendships, and community connections. Sometimes, like Abbie Deal, we make tradeoffs of what we think we want to what we end up choosing. Did Aldrich intend to make such an influence on generations of readers when she simply paraphrased the story of her mother’s and grandmother’s lives? The gift she gave us through her stories (Lantern, and others) was one of emotional connection to real life’s love and heartache reflected through fictional characters. She gave us a piece of herself.

As the Winds of Giving urge us to dance with the delight of merging ourselves in that unending flow of Giving and Receiving, let us be mindful of the unseen influences that motivate us to Give and serve and share and love. Let us stand facing those Winds and be the Grateful Receivers of Blessings as they roll, wave, ripple, and dip into and through our lives, and the lives of those we serve.

Happy Mother’s Day – a little in advance – to the Ultimate Givers, mothers and mother figures in all their nurturing forms. 💛

It’s more than just a piece of plastic

(Note: this post is not about plastic pollution or recycling, so please don’t judge by the title)



On the break room table at work, someone left a baggie filled with candy and gum. I took a few pieces to satisfy a sweet tooth later at break time.

One of the pieces was a small “Krabby Patty,” a gummy-like piece of candy shaped in the form of a hamburger featured on the cartoon, “Spongebob.” When I opened it, I discovered the candy was nestled inside a tiny plastic form to protect it from being smashed. I thought a thought that I used to think when I was a kid upon finding or discovering items like this:  “This would make a perfect Barbie sink!”

This little one-inch-square piece of clear plastic brought back memories of my childhood’s creative methods of providing household goods and supplies to Barbie dolls. Cereal boxes and discarded food containers that could be cleaned are great resources for supplying a doll’s needs, from beds to couches, to closets to room dividers! Whenever I found a formed piece of plastic or cardboard, my mind sought out ways to make them useful. This piece of plastic could be a salad bowl or perhaps a bathroom sink – or a hat! Cardboard boxes had new lives as doll houses, with no thought or concern to them not being bright colors and store-bought. They were stackable for multi-level abodes, and accordion folding a strip of paper or thin cardboard made stairs. Left-over gift wrap made great wallpaper, or careful use of crayon and marker to draw windows with curtains, portraits on the wall, and rugs on the floor. One of the best Christmas gifts I ever received was a Barbie wardrobe hand-stitched by my mother from fabric scraps leftover from quilting projects. I think I may have cried with Gratitude, maybe not so much for the doll clothes themselves, but for the thought and the creativity and the patience and the work it took to make them.

I still sometimes use plastic and cardboard containers for small storage needs. There are volumes of YouTube videos dedicated to the art as a literal craft – more than just a hobby! – if you want to go beyond trimming off the box-top tabs! Creativity is such a wonderful thing – and the best thing about it is that it is unlimited in what can be imagined or reimagined from simple objects. The best airplanes of our pre-flight childhoods were always cardboard boxes – flaps intact as wings. Even cats and dogs often prefer the containers to the toys that came in them!

To say that an object or container has lost its value after it is opened is to put a damper on the imagination. Of course, we can’t keep every box or piece of plastic we obtain, but it’s fun to think about how something can be used in a different way than for what it was originally created.

Maybe people are this way, too. Mothers and fathers had lives before they were parents, which can be a surprise to their children (I remember being shocked, in third grade, to realize that the sisters at my Catholic elementary school actually used the bathroom and ate food in a dining room!). A person who performs a certain job for many years may decide to quit to pursue a different dream, out of want or necessity. Someone else may have interests outside what you think “fits” their normal persona of your experience. I once heard of a brain surgeon who quit his job to become a bagel-maker because that had always been his dream. Not sure if that’s true, but there are plenty of other stories of similar nature. And what about homeless or unemployed people? Who are they beyond – and before – their current life experience? What about the dreams of the misfit kids from broken homes? We don’t know everything about everyone, no matter how generically we try to understand them, and neither do we know what people are capable of based on a first impression that can often be influenced by circumstances beyond their control.

Thomas Carlyle translated Goethe’s words from German to say: ‘When we take people merely as they are, we make them worse; when we treat them as if they were what they should be, we improve them as far as they can be improved.’ Could this be likened to seeing another use for an original container, or simply saying the best in others no matter how they are presenting?

The next time you open a package, I invite you to look at it as more than a wrapping for a new phone or pint of strawberries or even candy container. What else can it be?

What else – or who else – could you be?

My Brother’s Keeper?

What do you expect?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you actually thought about it, you might realize that almost everything you believe about someone else is based on what someone ELSE said. This someone ELSE can be people you know (perhaps mutually, but not necessarily) such as family, friends, co-workers, and/or the media. So often, we base what we think of another person on what someone has told us or what we have “heard” or “seen” about them. In another word: gossip.

But think for a moment about the people you “know” personally. These do include family members, of course, friends, co-workers, and other acquaintances. What you think about them is based on an entirely different set of “facts” than the first group mentioned above. Or maybe not, based on what those close to you said. We also base our perceptions of relatives, neighbors, and family friends on what parents, grandparents, siblings, or extended family have said. Can you see how this affects your relationship with those people close to you?

What’s the difference? I will illustrate using a couple of personal examples.

I have worked at jobs where I have been “warned” about So-and-So because of his temper, their bad attitude, and her negative personality. I was told, “Oh, you have to watch out for him – he’ll stab you in the back!”

What happened?

If I listen too closely to the warnings, I find my perception of the certain individual to be tainted with an expectation of them to act out in a prescribed way. But if I don’t let these warnings take root in my own consciousness regarding the other person or persons, then I have a completely different experience with them.

In a past experience, I had a job where someone in the HR office was reputed to be “very difficult” to work with. It seemed, this person would go out of their way to find flaws in people and create drama and suspicion. By this time in my working life, I was aware that what people say about someone else may or may not be true. So in my dealings with this person, I refused to allow those prior warnings to affect my working relationship. What I got was a pleasant experience with someone who probably knew deep down they were not well-liked and probably didn’t quite know what to do about it. This person took his job seriously and was detail-oriented, and most likely an A-Personality. So in the course of performing his job duties, he ruffled a few feathers and got a “bad reputation” amongst co-workers. I never experienced the negative side of this person; he was always pleasant and respectful to me, and we even had a little joke about one of his pets.

Other, similar experiences involved co-workers who had reputations of being difficult to work with; sometimes, they were called inept, a slacker, “stupid,” and other, more colorful descriptions. Often, my work would require me to obtain personal information about them, which created a personal bond between us because they had shared some information that not everyone knew and it might give me an insight to their personality, or the opportunity to learn more about them in a platonic, non-threatening way because they knew their information was safe with me. Again, my connection almost always produced a positive liaison between the two of us and I never had to endure an “inept” or unpleasant exchange with the other party.

Why?

Because I started with a fresh slate. I try not to allow the negativity or gossip I’ve heard affect how I relate to the other person or persons. If I treat them with respect, try to learn a little about them and relate on a common ground level, I get along fine. Then, if someone else complains to me about So-and-So, I try to deflect the comment to a less damaging idea, perhaps suggesting an alternative point of view in looking at the person or their motivation for doing what they do. I never add to the negative image carried away from the encounter by feeding the gossip mill. One of my early job evaluations reflected this in my supervisor’s comments regarding relationship with others, “…to put it simply, you never gossiped.”

If I am my brother’s keeper, then I want to be responsible for how I view my brother (and sister). I’m speaking figuratively here regarding relationships with other people (it also applies to family ties). I am gullible, I admit. I expect the best from others, and I expect them to keep their word. I think this is interpreted by the other person and they find no need to disappoint me. If I am duped by another, then shame on them, for I want to keep thinking and believing the best about people. Sure, there may be lots of “bad” people in the world, but if I can influence someone to make a positive choice simply by being nice to them and not “expecting” them to be less than they were created to be, then I am making a difference not just in my encounter with them, but in their encounters with others.

I invite you to think about the way you view others, and be honest with yourself if you allow your perceptions to be clouded or affected by what someone ELSE has told you about someone. If this is the case, drop what was said and try to relate to the person on clean ground, that is, without preconceived expectations of a certain type of behavior or personality being expressed. When a person is shy, for example, they come across differently than when they feel comfortable with others and may get a bad “rep” for being aloof or “better than others,” when that’s not the truth at all. I’m willing to bet, if you are willing to meet the other person (no matter who they are) on even ground, expecting the best from and for them, your relationship will exceed your expectations, and theirs.

Namaste’