Tag: psychology

Childhood, Dreams, Letting Go, Love, Memory, Spirituality

These things

Jen

“Thoughts were things, to be collected, collated, analyzed, shelved, or resolved. Fragmentary ideas, apparently unrelated, were often found to be part of a special layer or stratum of thought and memory…”  –H.D., Writing on the Wall

I seal in plastic Ziploc bags photographs, letters, my child’s artwork. I pile up large Tupperware containers of high school journals, college scrapbooks, and sticker albums I’ve saved since 3rd grade.  There is even a small box inside a larger box in which I store cut-up cotton shirts; remnants of all the graphic tees I ever stuffed into the set of almond-colored formica drawers of my childhood bedroom. The idea was to make a quilt one day. But it’s been more than 20 years since I cut them and still they remain fragments of a former social life.

Sometimes, I let go. I purge, actually; for the movement is swift and forceful.

I gather up books and plastic toys from McDonald’s and washed out jelly jars I was saving for just-in-case. I rally the troops in their respective bedrooms and we dig out unaccounted for Lego, DVDs, and well-loved teddies they once birthed at Build-A-Bear.

It used to be that we would prepare a yard sale — display all our attachments large and small on the grass for others to descend upon and barter for. Now, I push it all down into a free tote bag I got once at the grocery store and drive to the recycling area.

My load becomes lighter then. I feel clean in the same way I do when I make the bed before sleeping in it.

It’s temporary, though, this weightlessness. I will feel dirty again. I will feel weighed down by the objects that make up my life.

* * *

Sometimes I want it all back.

Not all. But something specific.

Days or years pass, for instance, and suddenly I long for the floor-length sleeveless, blue and white flowered dress I traded in for credit at the secondhand shop on Broadway because I could never bend down when I wore it. When I realize it’s missing, I’m surprised. How could I have given up that dress? Didn’t I understand that one day it might fit me differently? There are photographs of me in that dress I can actually tolerate – black and white strip photos taken on the boardwalk in Ocean City. I was younger then. I wore contacts. But, I think it was the dress that made me pretty.

Sometimes, in a dream, I’ll be certain I still own a pair of shoes I have long since abandoned. Where are they, the black wedges I know will be perfect for the job interview I have tomorrow?  I frantically shuffle around my dusty, hardwood-lined closet floor, pushing to the side my brown suede clogs and my untied docksiders and my Naot sandals. My fingers will never find them because I listed them on a Freecycle board two years ago and subsequently dropped them off in front of a Tudor in South Orange, NJ.

One morning, I wake up and realize I’ve been dreaming about the brown leather backpack I carried with me through four years of college and some years after. I don’t even remember when I threw it away. This pains me. Documenting my losses is a coping mechanism.

Soft to the touch, but robust enough to manage three spiral-bound notebooks, a heavy “baby chem” textbook, and a glass bottle of Raspberry Snapple tucked away in a side unzippered pouch — that brown leather backpack was the security blanket of my young adulthood. Sometimes I tucked the yellow Sony Walkman into the other side pocket, a long track of rubber-lined wire snaking out and up into my ears as I hiked the city blocks between my apartment on F Street and the modern mirrored building on 22nd where I took beginner’s Hebrew on the 3rd floor and piano lessons in the basement.  There were crumbs of a chocolate chip cookie that smelled like nicotine once at the bottom of that brown leather backpack.

There was a flap, too, that closed off the main compartment, but also served as a wallet-like coin holder, with room enough for a wad of cash and easy access to my student ID. With one hand, I could click the flap shut into a magnetic metal clasp. Even though it appeared to be a complicated buckle, it wasn’t. It was very simple actually.

I must have gotten rid of the brown leather backpack in Tucson.

It must have been after my mother treated me to the high end, shiny Petunia Picklebottom diaper bag.  Like the brown leather backpack, it was a handy carryall with suitable compartments – an easy-access exterior pocket for diapers and wipes; one of the side pockets for bottles. It even came with an interior zippered pouch for personal items, a nursing pad, or eventually, a tampon.

When my son was two, we decided to leave Arizona to head back to where we came from in New Jersey.  That’s when we had our first yard sale. We sold the glass tables we registered for at Pottery Barn. We sold one of the lamps, too. We sold the swing set in the backyard.  I don’t remember what else.

It must have been then I parted with the brown leather backpack.

I guess.

* * *

Now, it’s a black canvas backpack I carry daily (a leftover promotional gift from a job I left 14 years ago). Inside are two pieces of uneaten fruit and half a cream cheese sandwich prepared on a gluten-free pita.  There is an unzippered side pocket from which a Laken thermo-insulated bottled filled with filtered water peeks out and another side pocket in which I carry plastic bags for “just in case.”  In two exterior zippered compartments, there is spare change for use in either Israel or in America, but not in both.  There are markers, pencils, pens, bubblegum already chewed.

It’s durable, my black canvas backpack.  And loved, too, in a colder more practical way. I carry it on two shoulders instead of one. I am often in awe of how long it’s lasted.

From time to time –in between classes at the university where I am studying for my Master’s degree or on a plane seated in the middle of two of my children — I consider how long and often I’ve weighed the black backpack down. How I’ve tested it. How it still serves me.

I wonder, too, how I will one day lose track of the black canvas backpack or if I will wear it until it breaks.

Community, Love, Mindfulness, Philosophy, Relationships, Religion, Spirituality

Synchronistically delicious

Jen

I am often troubled when I hear people use the word “serendipity” when I think they mean “synchronicity.” But I never really investigated the difference between the two words.

In my unresearched opinion, I always imagined synchronicity as attached to “meaningful” or extraordinary. Whereas serendipity is more playful, like a cup of frozen hot chocolate.

serendipity

Lucky. Fortuitous. Unexpected. Right place at the right time sorta thing.  Whereas synchronicity … when it happens … almost feels as if its arrival was fated. Expected, even if not by the participants. Anticipated, in some way, even if unseen to all but the gods until the very moment the synchronicity occurs.

Synchronicity, to me, carries in its meaning a certain divinity, a certain magic.

So much so that I remember distinctly when and where I was when I first heard the word and its layperson’s explanation.  I was at the lake house of a friend in celebration of her engagement. While dipping my feet in the lake, I chatted with a friend of the bride-to-be whom I’d never met before. She shared with me the details of a paper she was working on (perhaps her Master’s thesis or her dissertation), all on the topic of this experience called “synchronicity.”

I admitted to her that I’d never heard the word before.

“Oh,” she smiled. “But you’ve certainly had this experience.” She went on to describe what I had always thought of (at least since reading The Celestine Prophecy in 9th grade) as “meaningful coincidence.”

However, “meaningful coincidence” always sounded lame. Such a deeply moving or spiritual encounter needed a better descriptor.

“Synchronicity,” a word steeped in the concept of time (my favorite philosophical topic of conversation both then and now), was perfect for me. I was so thankful for having met this woman at the lake. Our meeting was, in fact, meaningful. Synchronicitous (synchronistic?), we joked at the time.

Perhaps this is why I loved so much Ginz’s response to my “haiku challenge” yesterday.

Walking alone is
often the first step towards
synchronicity.

This, indeed, is what I was going for when I was trying to describe the outcome of a walk alone I took yesterday. Too me, synchronicity, isn’t just a word, but a timely, yet timeless explanation for magic, for meaning, for connection.

When “alone” unexpectedly transforms into “no longer alone.” And loneliness is replaced by oneness.

Health, Letting Go, Mindfulness, Modern Life

A virtual cure for anxiety is almost here

Jen

This morning, my hair dryer caught on fire.

Which is a lot better than my hair catching on fire — which actually happened once, the first time I visited Israel in 1992 and forgot to use a converter before I set my curling iron to my bangs.

I lost half my bangs that day … which was probably a good thing, in hindsight.

I sensed something was wrong this morning when I started to smell smoke. I smart girl.

By the time smoke started pouring out of the thing, my hand was already on its way to the outlet. So when fire sparks started shooting out from the plug, I pulled it out from the wall immediately.

RIP Conair Ion Shine. RIP smooth middle aged hair with no fly-aways.

It was startling, for sure, the fireworks display. It’s a fear of mine — electrical appliances spawning disasters. A friend of mine lost her house to a forgotten curling iron once when I was 10.

But the incident today was also strength-building.

How so?

As a lifelong anxiety sufferer, I’ve become really good at imagining the worst. My mind is programmed for disaster and tragedy; not so much survival and rescue. So that when I do save the day — when I manage to get myself out of a hairy situation or when, for instance, my child manages to narrowly escape harm all on his own — the grey matter in my mind has a new paradigm from which to think.

See, I can tell myself. You made it.

You are okay.

Not that I am inviting harm to myself or my children.

But I do firmly believe that a good, solid, quite startling, near tragedy is a muscle strengthener for those of us with anxiety. (As long as the outcome is a happy ending.)

It shows us that the worst isn’t always as bad as we think.

Perhaps one day, in the not-so-far away future, the smarty pants tech inventors I work with will come up with a virtual reality stimulator whose anxiety treatment is designed to fully scare the crap out of us.

So that we will see, once and for all, how strong, indeed, we are.

Memory

One compulsion leads to another

Jen

I wrote recently about this superpower I possess called synesthesia. How I see letters and words in full color. And how I am going to defeat fear once I manage to harness my power properly.

It occurred to me this morning that my superpower might be the cause of quirky compulsions I also possess like the one that prevents me from listening to the Beach Boys in December, or drives me to listen to Van Morrison when the leaves start to change color and fall from the trees (even if I’m not living in the country in which they do.)

The connection between music and emotion is a studied one that’s not unique to me, but actually quite documented in human beings. But what about music and season? For me, the music must fit the weather outside. And there are singers or albums that are just completely inappropriate in winter, or off limits when I’m driving with the top down in July.

I looked into it a little. And guess what?

There’s a connection…and suddenly my strange compulsions don’t seem so compulsive anymore.

Studies show that music is connected to color and color is connected to emotion — particularly for people with synesthesia. From there, the connection is easy.  Emotion as it relates to season is a no-brainer. Lots of babies are born in August, nine months after couples snuggle up together inside supposedly to warm up from winter’s cold. I think it’s more than shelter from the cold they seek; but love and interpersonal connection that is often sacrificed in the isolation that winter brings.

Ask the average Joe or Jane which emotion is aroused when they envision summer. Most will say joy. Freedom. Fun. Ask the same person to describe the accompanying emotions to winter, Most will say introspection, introversion or sadness.

What about you? What do you say?

Having superpowers can make a girl feel lonely sometimes. Like I’m the only one whose heart hurts as fall moves towards winter. But when I get like that I cry it out to Randy Newman … whose voice and lyrics match perfectly the melancholy and nostalgia that crop up for me in fall.

Or I listen to this video — a performance of his “I Want You to Hurt Like I Do” in Berlin– and I laugh. Knowing I’m not really as alone as I think.

Philosophy

Carl Jung said life begins at 40

Jen
Courtesy quotepixel.com
Courtesy quotepixel.com

Carl Jung, man … his words are a treasure box of quotes waiting to be mined for social media memes.

I was looking on Google this morning for a passage he wrote in his autobiography — Memories, Dreams, Reflections — and in passing discovered the above quote, not at all on the topic I was researching.

Nodding my head, I quickly downloaded the picture and uploaded it to my blog, eager to share it with all of you. Waiting for your “hell yeahs!” and your “don’t we know its!” and our joint agreement  that life sure does begin at 40.

But then I stopped. Right here. On this very line.

Did Jung really write this? The sentence phrasing sounds more like an inspirational poster they sell at university bookstores than a statement made by Jung.

Then I stopped again. On this very line.  Right here. And asked myself, “does it matter?”

Of course it does — in the long run scheme of things. No one should be out in the world molesting Carl Jung’s words and turning them into pretty pictures for Pinterest.

But in the short term scheme of things, maybe this sentiment was exactly what I was looking for today, and didn’t know it.  

Or maybe this quote led me to write this post which led me to find this article which led me right back to the information I was looking for.

Jung, man.

 

===

Enjoy this post? Want to read more posts about turning 40?

Putting out fires at almost 40 

The “new 40”

Let the “summer of 40″ begin”

 

 

 

Letting Go, Mindfulness, Philosophy

What color is fear?

Jen

I have this thing.

After half a lifetime of thinking it was either a special power possessed by only a select few, or a strange sensory birth defect that generally didn’t interfere with my life, I discovered it was a thing.

With a name.

Synesthesia.

I see letters, and words, in color.

Not all words, and not all the time — only particular words and only really when I pay attention to it.

Months of the year, for instance, each appear as a particular color when I visualize them in my mind. So detailed, in fact, that June and July are both red, but different shades.

All the letters of the English alphabet are colored, too, but strangely, not the Hebrew alphabet. Some letters are (Aleph is white like “A”), and some aren’t. If I were a neurologist, I’d probably study that, but I’m not. I’m just the handicapped super hero with a colorful dictionary in her mind.

What’s particularly interesting to me, though, is how words can change color when they are paired with another.

Prickly is white. But pear is yellow. Prickly pear is white. Why?

I have no idea.

Home is red. But go is green. Go home is “green.” Does my mind automatically prefer the verb? Does the adjective always dominate?

Fear is a word whose color I’d like to change.

If  I could somehow convert fear from that rusty-tinted brown orange to a vibrant hot pink with purple polka dots, I somehow believe that my perception of fear might change, too.

Can you really be terrified of a word that is hot pink with purple polka dots?

What if, indeed, the secret power of synesthesia is the ability to use color to change the way you perceive ?

Change the color of a word in order to manipulate your world?

Into a place that’s less scary?

Letting Go, Mindfulness, Philosophy, Relationships

Do you trust me?

Jen

My one son has the memory of an elephant.

He can remember the details of events that happened when he was three, trips we took when he was four.

My other son — not so much.

He hardly remembers his best friends from America, and what he does remember is from stories we’ve told him and pictures we’ve shown.

We’ve fabricated most of his memories by sharing our own.

What I mean by that is, my son now claims to remember things I’m not sure he does.

He’s recounting stories of stories. Not stories about actual events in his memory.

Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist, claims that this is not unusual. That our memories are easily-manipulated.

Unintentionally, and intentionally.

In her recent Ted talk, she offers a firsthand account of working on a crime case gone horribly wrong.

A man was wrongly identified by his supposed victim and convicted of rape — purely on the testimony of a woman who claimed she remembered him doing it.

I’m conflicted by this.

On the one hand, I’m extremely uncomfortable that a person may be put in jail for a crime he didn’t commit simply because one or more people remembered seeing him at the crime — which apparently happens a lot (less so now that we can use DNA evidence). On the other hand,

I desperately want to be believed.

If it were me — If I remembered this man as the perpetrator of the crime against me — I’d better well be believed!

I want raped women to be believed.

I want children to be believed.

And, even when a crime hasn’t been committed against me, even when I have not been wronged, I want to believe in my memory.

I want to know that what I remember seeing and doing and feeling and hearing actually happened.

I am emotionally attached to my memory.

My memory serves me.

Most of the time.

And yet, intellectually I understand that my memory is nothing more than an ever-changing interpretation of an event or an experience.

I think about memory a lot — as a parent, as a child, as a wife, as a writer.

I am very conscious of making my children’s memories, for instance.

I am very conscious that no matter how hard I work to make them good, they might remember them bad.

It’s in these conscious moments that I have great compassion for my own parents.

It’s in these conscious moments that I feel frustrated, too — knowing that there is very little I can do to control or manipulate another person’s memory of me.

As a writer, I acknowledge that my memory is faulty, even though I happen to have one that’s particularly strong and sensitive to detail.

And yet, I honor my memory when I write. I let it lead me down dark hallways, and up vanilla-scented stairwells.

I let my memory pierce that outer wall of my heart so that I may feel love not just in the past but in the present.

We put ourselves at great risk by ascribing so much power to memory – -this is true — especially in situations where memory may put an innocent man in jail;

But if we don’t give so much power to memory; what then?

If we laugh at it; belittle it; if we judge it; doubt it; forget it …

What happens then?

Who are we without our memory?

Uncategorized

Today is 9/11/13

Jen

On this day, when many of us remember a September 11th that felt out-of-order
(to say the least), we may find some comfort in… order.

9   11  13

is a sequence of consecutive odd numbers.

You may remember this from first grade, or from watching Cyberchase with your preschooler.

Or, it may have come to you quite accidentally while you were eating a chunk light tuna and cucumber unsandwich (aka tuna and cucumber on a plate.)

There you are, crunching away, and you think to yourself:

I wish I had time today to read or write a personal essay about the events of 9/11/01.

Then, out of nowhere, from where thoughts often arise, you see numbers scroll in your head.

9/11/13

Ahhh…that’s a nice pattern, you think. I wonder if there’s some gematria value or significance.

You add the numbers together in your head, 9 + 11 + 13 = 33.

Ah, you sigh again, 33. A double digit with repeating numbers. Nice.

You are also somewhat relieved that the numbers didn’t add up to 66.

You chuckle to yourself because you are superstitious.

And because you are suddenly present in that moment to how robot-like we human beings can be.

How quick we are to search for order as a way to make sense of madness.

But then, what else is there to do on 9/11, but search for ways to make sense out of madness?

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is knowing that today sucks …emphasis on today

Jen

Some days just suck.

How do you find mindfulness in the sucky days?

Some days just suck.
Some days just suck.

1. Be aware that today sucks.

2. Emphasize the today instead of the sucks.

3. For fun: Walk around and say “today fucking sucks” out loud. This especially works if you never ever use the word fuck in your daily vocabulary. It works exceptionally well for individuals who never read anything that has the word “fuck” in it because they think it weakens or degrades the message.

There is nothing that brings you back to the present like walking around your house in sweatpants and a ponytail shouting “Today fucking sucks.” It often works quicker than choosing to let go or sitting in meditative prayer.

And frankly, we imperfect human beings sometimes need to acknowledge the fucking sucky in the world, the sucky in today, the sucky in ourselves, the sucky in other people, and in our relationships.

When we also acknowledge its immediacy, however, we mindfully frame the suckiness.

As in: Today sucks. This moment fucking sucks.

Ahhh…

Try it with a friend: It might make your day a little less sucky.

(And if that doesn’t work, play this Pink song at the the maximum volume and scream along like a 12 year old at a bat mitzvah.)

Letting Go, Mindfulness

The long road to letting go

Jen
http://instagram.com/p/Y9s23Ll6rV/
My kids running in the fields behind Kibbutz Hannaton, Lower Galilee, Israel

I have a bad temper. And I hold on to anger.

I don’t know if I was born sullen and stubborn or if I cultivated these attractive personality traits over time.

Regardless, what I’ve fortunately learned in recent years is that “letting go” is the gateway to peace and ease — the path away from sullen and stubborn.

In the few years before I moved to Israel, I studied with teachers experienced in the mind/body connection, many of whom introduced me to the concepts of mindfulness I often write about. Through their teaching, I understood this practice could alleviate everything from aggravation to anxiety to physical pain.

As a writer, I’m really good at listening to other people’s stories and sharing them with others. Which I did a lot with mindfulness, but looking back, I was not so good at practicing it in real life.

Living in Israel, though — mostly because of the language and cultural differences — has been a daily practice in the art of letting go.

Letting go of my ego.

Letting go of my sense of control.

Letting go of my assumptions .. .about myself, my neighbors, the region, the world.

Letting go of stereotypes.

Letting go of the tight hold over my children.

Letting go of certain dreams and expectations.

I’m nowhere near a master of the art of letting go.

Maybe an experienced student. Possibly, good enough to be a T.A.

Still a long way from Zen bliss.

But with this particular type of study, thankfully, the culmination of my efforts is not in a certificate or a degree, right?

The win is in the practice itself.

I win every single time I let go.

Again and again and again.

Which means I also have the space in which to mess up, without worrying about failure. Because, think about it, failure (hanging on to something ugly like jealousy, resentment, or righteous indignation — all favorites of the stubborn and sullen) just sets me up for an immediate opportunity to win once again.

By letting go.

And with that philosophical turn, I need a nap.

Thank you for listening. This T.A. is outta here.