Intelligence

 

I adore Nick Rhodes. He’s not my favourite member of Duran Duran—that honour belongs to the father of my unborn children—but in truth I would adore Nick even if he wasn’t in the band. I find him alternately insightful and hilarious. It’s been clear from the beginning that he’s highly intelligent ... but on finding this quote, I was initially compelled to disagree with him.

At first glance, I’d have said that intelligence is often too easily insulted. Intelligence is the scorekeeper, the entity who judges status and determines the hierarchy. Intelligence, if given any authority, can become, depending on one’s nature, nurturing, condescending, patronizing, oppressive, suppressive or, at worst, despotic.

Unless he’s referring to emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is less about being right or being in control than it is about being open-minded and accepting of other opinions. Emotional intelligence allows for debate between opposing views, and for proponents of either side to remain friends in the event of a draw. Emotional intelligence ensures that criticism, whether given or received, is less crushing than constructive.

I know intelligent people who wield their smarts like a weapon designed to show their superiority. I know people whose intelligence is applied to fostering their own poor self-esteem. I also know intelligent people who think of themselves less (rather than less of themselves) than they think of others. In any of those categories, only one seems to fit the notion of intelligence being insulted.

So now I think Nick might be right. Intelligence itself is actually a neutral force. Neither proud nor humble, intelligence does not tell us how or where to use it. I’ve been confusing intelligence with ego!

D-oh!

Thanks for Nothing

This Thanksgiving weekend, I am grateful for the impermanent nature of reality.

Didn’t see that coming, did you? Neither did I. Looking back through the blog log, I haven’t always posted about Thanksgiving on the second Monday in October, and I was disinclined to write about it this year, too. After all 2018 has put me through, gratitude, despite being the fundamental concept of my path to happiness, has been hard to come by.

Which doesn’t explain why I felt compelled to write about it anyway. I resisted at first, stubbornly loyal to my sentiment that life has sucked since last spring. True, I have seen glimmers of light in the overarching darkness—I can’t not see them, given my equally stubborn loyalty to understanding contrast—but how blatantly cock-eyed does this optimist want to be? As a cherished colleague recently observed, “ ‘Committed’ has two meanings.”

My gratitude list always starts with Ter. She’s the rock in my life. Batman to my Robin. The yin to my yang. My cool inspector, armchair therapist, sounding board, heavy lifter and nutrition coach. From her, one thing leads to another and my list gets longer almost by itself. Family, friends, co-workers, abundance, prosperity, health, creativity, yaddayaddayadda ...

Though I remain deeply grateful for everything on it, today that list feels more like a rote recitation than a genuine expression of thanks. So when my little voice urged me to write something specifically for Thanksgiving, my first response was, Forget it; I’ve got nothing new to say.

Nothing new? Really? Maybe you should ponder that more closely, Ru.

So I did. I gave it some serious consideration, and this is what I came up with:

I am grateful for the impermanent nature of reality. To be clear, of this reality.

Everything in this 3-D world is temporary. Everything. Our homes, our jobs, our money, our families, even our compostable containers—everything we think we own can be gone in a heartbeat. Be it by fire, flood, divorce, disease, crooked accountants, you name it, there are no guarantees. None. Zero, zip, zilch. And you know what? There aren’t meant to be. It’s strangely liberating to realize that no matter what happens, you can overcome it. You may not think you can (alas, too many people don’t), but humans are resilient, resourceful, and more adaptable than they’re taught to believe.

Coincidentally, even as our possessions are temporary, so are the less tangible things. Like heartache. Like grief. Like sorrow. Even happiness is fleeting, so best to embrace it while it’s here. This very moment is already over, never to return, and don’t look back at it else you’ll miss the one you’re in and the next one will be in your face before you’re ready. It might be the most joyous moment in living memory, or it might bring physical pain like you’ve never imagined. Whatever it brings, the moment and everything in it will surely pass. It has to. While time is relative, it’s also perpetually in motion. We’re always moving forward, back to where we came from, where the only thing that does matter, the only thing that does last forever, is love.

We are spiritual beings having a human experience. I admit, Spirit Ru has not liked the human part of this gig one whit of late, but everything I have endured, everything I have lost (or thought I’ve lost), has brought me to the point where I can honestly say how grateful I am that nothing here is permanent. Live the moment. Good, bad or indifferent, it will not last forever—and in the end, the one thing we take with us is the one thing we brought when we were born:

Ourselves.

With love (and gratitude),

Lemons

When someone’s life goes sour, I’m the first one to spout a platitude. When it’s my life, I’m the first one to want to clock the first one to spout a platitude.

Like this oldie but goodie: “When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.”

If all had gone to plan, this weekend my wee sister and I would have been halfway through visiting our older older brother on Prince Edward Island, and today I’d have been on an in-person artist date with Nicole. Alas, life had another plan that, by ripple effect, changed the original plan, plus a couple of others.

I spent the summer mourning my “sister trip” as well as my mother, and even though the flights were fully refunded, having to do it still hurt. It also gave me a different song to sing when I tired of lamenting Mum. There were a few tracks on the “2018 Summer Sucks” EP, and I played that baby thin. I may even have incurred an eyeroll or two by writing this post, but stick with me – it gets brighter at the end.

It may be human to cry for what might have been, but it’s also terribly unproductive. “What might have been” is as unreal as what once was; all we truly have is Right Now. And while in the Now, even what seems real is merely transient. Sadness is as fleeting as happiness if you choose to make it so. Denying what we feel in a given moment doesn’t make it go away – in fact, it’s more likely to come out sideways when we’re not looking – so by all means, take that moment and relish it. We’re here to experience contrast; however, it’s equally important to remember that we can change how we feel, good or bad, according to how we want to feel.

I didn’t know it before, but I know it now: I don’t like grief. While it’s necessary to the human condition, it’s no fun at all and eventually I got tired of it. I slowly started thinking about other things. Happier things. Creative things. I love and miss Mum no less, yet now that I’m facing the sun again, she’s even more present in my awareness. (How can she be gone and still be present? Only the Universe knows for sure!)

You rarely nail the recipe on the first go; you gotta keep tasting the lemons to get the sweetness right – and while some folks just plain like their lemonade on the sour side, others have no idea that adding the sugar is up to them. Henry David Thoreau said, and I’m paraphrasing as usual, it’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.

I hated that wee sis and I had to postpone our trip. I hated the reason more, of course, but we certainly haven’t cancelled it. We’ve simply changed the dates.

So Thoreau was right. It’s about perspective. And when you get right down to it, you can’t make lemonade without those darned lemons.

The Frankincense Incident

Ter called it “a room interrupted”. Despite rearranging the furniture to open up the feng shui, I remained so reluctant to go into my writing room that I began to wonder if it wasn’t me so much as it was the room itself. Sure, my writing had been stalled for some time, but on any other day I was eager to revisit my half-finished projects and maybe start something new ... but whenever I went into my room, I couldn’t settle. I couldn’t lose myself in the flow. I dotted around from piece to piece, getting nowhere but frustrated and quitting well before tea time. Eventually, excuses not to write became conscious decisions not to write. “Nope, not today,” I would say, and eventually I had to ask myself why not. And I had to be honest with the answer.

I think I always knew, but it seemed so silly and implausible that I was embarrassed to say it aloud. It couldn’t be right. It had to be something wrong with me, with my conviction, my commitment, my whatever. It couldn’t be what immediately came each time I asked the question.

Finally, I bounced it off my cool inspector. She would tell me if I was losing it or making (more) excuses. She would also tell me if I was on to something. So I said to her one day, “I don’t want to go into my writing room.”

“Why not?” she asked. “Don’t you want to write today?”

“I think it’s the room, Ter. It doesn’t feel right.”

She gave it a little thought before she answered. “That’s no surprise. It’s a room interrupted.”

She went on the remind me of its history. It began as her bedroom, but she had to give it up because she couldn’t sleep with the neighbour noise downstairs. Her armoire and all her clothes are still in the room, and so, perhaps, is the residual energy of that frustrating time. Then there’s the bathroom upstairs where, as she so eloquently put it, “people shit on that room every day. That can’t be good for anyone’s creativity!” She thought a little bit more, then suggested we do a space clearing. She pulled out one of our trippy hippy guru books and flipped to the applicable page. “Frankincense will do it.”

Not a lot of people have a bottle of frankincense on hand. Naturally, we do. “How much?” I asked, pulling it and the diffuser from the cupboard.

“Eight drops,” Ter replied.

“Does it say that in the book?”

“No, it’s just my sense.”

After thirty-plus years together, I no longer question Ter’s sense.

We set the diffuser on a shelf in my room, cracked open the window to let the negative energy out, and went about our regular business.

I cannot explain how, but it worked. Almost immediately, the room felt better, as if the energy vibration had lifted to a cleaner, more positive level. Since then, I’ve been happy to come in and write. I’ve been comfortable, motivated and able to go with the flow. Whatever magical properties were in that oil, the end result was success!

I suppose I could try to explain. It’s probably better that I don’t. Maybe it won’t work for someone who doesn’t believe it will. So many of our perceptions are based on what we believe. Physical laws always apply, of course. An apple won’t fall up just because I believe it will—but because I believe in a friendly, loving and generous Universe, my reality reflects this belief. I understand and accept contrast (another pesky physical law), but on the whole, my life is charmed in ways I would not change for anything. I know people who fear everything. Their Universe is cold, harsh and frightening—and so the energy of their belief creates a life riddled with things to fear. It’s simple and it’s complicated and I think I just tried to explain the Frankincense Incident, didn’t I?

Do You See What I See?

What do you see when you look in the mirror? Do you see someone worth loving? Someone who is loved? Do you see someone whom you love?

Many of us tolerate their our reflections for practical purposes, like teeth-brushing and face-washing, but lots of us don’t like to look that closely at ourselves. We see what we’re told to see, and the mirror only shows the flaws that have dogged us from birth. We focus on our buckteeth and bug eyes because our peers focused on them and we mistook teasing for truth. Beauty, for most of us, was unattainable without certain products, and even then, Revlon has never worked the same magic on me as it did on Cindy Crawford.

She was the supermodel I figured I had the best shot at emulating. Trust me—it never happened.

That’s okay. I know now that her Cosmo covers were touched up to make her more than she actually was. None of us is perfect; we’ve established that. Unfortunately, we are primed to pay more attention to our imperfections than they deserve, and at the cost of what makes us beautiful.

You are so much more than what you see in the glass. Mirrors only show us two dimensions. I wonder sometimes how I appear to other people. I’m happy in my own skin (finally!), but I know some beautiful people who loathe to look in the mirror. What gives?

Here’s the best kept secret in the cosmos: everyone is beautiful. That’s the dimension the mirror cannot capture, and thus the one whose existence we insist on doubting. Our divinity eludes the tool we use to measure our appeal, yet our divinity is what makes us each unique and special and extraordinary. How can you be all those things and not be beautiful? A smile—even a bucktoothed one—is irresistible when it animates the smiler’s eyes. When we accept that we are divine, we allow ourselves to be loved. When we feel loved, we feel beautiful, and our distorted perception of ourselves is realigned to reveal the inescapable truth. Beauty resides in the soul, and everybody has one of those. Some of us are out of touch with it, but we have one nonetheless.

The next time you catch your own eye, take a minute to look—really look—at yourself, and don’t look away until you glimpse that beauty. I promise you, it’s there. I can see it, even if (right now) you can’t.

With love,

Squirrely

As soon as I woke up on Saturday morning, my mind started screaming. “What about this?” “What about that?” “How are you going to ... ?” “When are you going to ... ?” It was like being in bed with a hysterical toddler. Finally, I gave up and got up to discover Ter was already up for pretty much the same reason. Our individual issues might have differed, but the mental histrionics were identical.

I am grateful to her for many things, but our ongoing conversation—now in its thirty-somethingth year—is always in the top five. Quite simply, we talk. We share and sympathize and advise and caution and help each other to feel better because monsters are more easily faced with a wingman than by yourself, and sometimes just naming the beast to someone you trust will neutralize it.

Imagination is not always a good thing. Oh, those sparks of inspiration can pave the way to joy, happiness and creative climax. They can also drive me to the depths of despair. I don’t just tell stories, you see. I tell myself stories. I might be mildly anxious about something, but given too long a rein, my imagination can make it into a category five catastrophe.

It’s all about perspective.

A couple of weeks ago, Ter disappeared into the Ocean Room. She retreats to that room when seeking solace from the daily grind, the (real) toddler downstairs, the loud-mouthed roommate, and/or her own incredibly powerful intellect. After a while, I joined her for tea. We chatted a little, then she told me about the aforementioned perils of imagination running down a dark road. Turned out she’d been fretting a bit more than usual about something—okay, many things, but that’s how she rolls—and it had occurred to her that, since we each create our own reality, if she continued to indulge a particular line of thought, disaster was almost inevitable. Once checked, however, she was able to turn her imagination back toward the light. By the time I came into the room, she felt stronger and more positive about resolving what was bothering her.

Then she told me what the Universe had presented as an example to put it in perspective.

After mulling the imagination thing for a bit, she’d got up from her chair and glanced out the front window. It was late afternoon and the sun had moved behind the house, and the shadow she glimpsed crawling up the neighbours’ van was a honking huge critter that looked about to swallow the vehicle whole. What the hell is that? she thought, bug-eyed on adrenaline. Then she saw what cast the shadow:

It was a little squirrel, running up a tree.

Think about it.

Time on Your Side

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” - Lao Tzu

Where did we go wrong?

It’s not where you might think.

Okay, maybe it is. I agree that the speed of life has hit warp ten, and in the immortal words of Montgomery Scott, “we’re going nowhere mighty fast.”

Why is that? Why do we continually lament a loss of time in which to get things done? There is so much on everyone’s plate you’d think we’d accomplish something, but we end up spinning in circles, abusing regulated substances and each other, and getting no further ahead than our next paycheque.

So much for the pursuit of happiness.

Maybe we’re trying to do too much in too little time.

Or maybe it’s how we look at time itself. We view it as a limited commodity when we probably shouldn’t view at it as anything. We certainly shouldn’t regard it as linear. It’s not linear. It’s cyclical. Ask anyone with an inbox: you can’t empty the darned thing before it’s refilled as if by (black) magic. Time is the same. You can’t run out of it; it’s always there.

Better still, it’s there for you. In abundance. Honest. But if you believe you don’t have enough of it, or that you’ll run out of it, guess what? You don’t and you will.

I know, I know. How does this explain the difference between a dragging workday and a Mach speed weekend? Believe it or not, the same number of hours exists in a Tuesday as in a Saturday. I’m beginning to suspect that managing time effectively has more to do with how aware I am in the present moment. Not an hour or a day or a week from now, but right now.

Tuesday drags because I’m thinking about the weekend past or the weekend future rather than about what I’m doing at the moment. Once I focus on a project, time resumes its normal course. Not only does the day end sooner, I finish a task I initially feared wouldn’t get done due to—duh—lack of time!

By the same token, Saturday seems a lot shorter when I spend it thinking about work on Monday. I’m amazed at what I can accomplish on a weekend when I focus on the weekend itself rather than the dwindling time within it.

So the next time you’re worried about the time you don’t have, flip it to your advantage. Pay attention to the moment and repeat after me:

“I have all the time I need.”

And you will!

With love,

Be Wonderful

The Fixx recorded a song in the 80s called “Are We Ourselves?”

The short answer? “No.”

Another quote of mysterious origin (I heard it from Don Henley, but am pretty sure it’s not actually his) is, “The older we get, the more we become like ourselves.”

Well, life is a journey, right? We spend the first part of it trying to fit in, to become who we think we must become in order to be accepted by family, peers, superiors, and society as a whole. When we become detached or, worse, isolated; when we fear that we truly are alone and unloved, when we believe ourselves to be stupid or unworthy or useless, bad things happen.

Human things.

We must remember that we are here to be human, to experience contrast, to find our way back to ourselves, and return home with a sack full of lessons learned.

Ter was recently advised by someone who doesn’t know her very well that she is “a little unapproachable.” It wasn’t an accusation; it was more an FYI in case she wasn’t aware of the aura she projects, which is one of aloof reserve. She surprised the person by replying frankly. “I know,” she said. “It’s a weakness. I don’t like it, but I’ve accepted it.” She added that she is half-Scandinavian, which truly does make a difference, but refrained from mentioning her incredible shyness. She has struggled with it for as long as I’ve known her, because it’s not who she really is and, on some level, she knows it.

She is really wonderful.

So am I.

So are you.

Every one of us is wonderful. A lot of us have fallen out of touch with that wonder, but it’s still there. Seems I’ve spent a whole lot of years discovering who I truly am, but what I’m actually doing is rediscovering myself. I’ve had to release a bunch of learned behaviours and marginal ideas, but it turns out they were only holding me back, so who needs ’em?

This doesn’t mean I’ll be rich and/or famous one day. Genuine success isn’t measured in dollars and internet “hits”. It’s in discovering your true self and in being happy with who you really are.

Scary thought, eh? Imagine, spending time alone with no social media, family, series marathons or work issues to distract you from your own company. Yikes. How do you survive face time with a stranger?

Do something nice for yourself. Take a walk along the water. Buy yourself an ice cream on a cold day. Go to a movie that you, but no one you know, wants to see. Take a bubble bath by candlelight.

Most importantly, brook no internal criticism. When that snarky inside voice starts nagging you, tell it to shut up. You’ll never convince it that it’s wrong, so it’s better to ignore it. Better yet, beat it at its own game. When it says, “You’re an idiot”, counter with “Maybe, but I am also loved.” Eventually, you will drop the “Maybe” part because you won’t believe it anymore (and it was never true in the first place).

You are unique and magical and wonderful. I know it. The Universe knows it. Deep down, you know it, too. So just sit quietly for a moment. Close your eyes. Breathe in and out in equal measure. In, out, in, out. Your mind will jitter a little, but that’s okay. Pay it no attention. Focus on this instead:

I am loved.

I am safe.

I am wonderful.

Because you are.

With love,

Better All The Time

Except for John Taylor, the Jaguar E-type, and Chocolat’s champagne truffle, nothing is completely perfect. It may seem so at the beginning, but in due course, flaws will become evident. Your shiny exotic sports car will start to misfire. Your dream home will develop a leaky roof. The new colleague you clicked with turns out to be bipolar. Mr. Right comes with two kids and a clingy ex-wife.

You get the picture.

The opposite is also inevitable. What sucks right now will improve. It doesn’t matter where you are in life, that big wheel keeps on turnin’ and everything associated with it is in its own present moment.

What am I trying to say here? Basically, that good stuff co-exists with bad stuff and vice versa. It’s a matter of—there’s that word again—perspective. You can find something positive in chaos and you can find something to kill your joy. It’s your call whether to seek gratitude or not, but it’s also a given that positive and negative happen at the same time. Life is never solely one or the other. It’s always both. What takes precedence is whatever gets your attention. Admittedly, some downers demand attention as part of our learning, but while we’re dealing with the human condition, we can take heart in knowing that everything around us is moving like a Ferris Wheel, some things rising to a pinnacle and others on the descent. Sure, the latter may be construed as depressing, but really, it’s not. It’s life—evolving and revolving.

Many years ago, my father quoted me a Chinese proverb (and I’m paraphrasing here): “Bad luck, like good, cannot last forever.”

And it doesn’t. Change is always happening. The trick is to enjoy the ride—and when it’s scary as hell and you want it to stop, gird your loins and trust that it will, because it will.

With love,

Ra

One morning last week, I went across the street and sat at the beach while the sun came up. I wanted to witness the first warming spark as it breached the horizon. Not through my window or my camera, with no company; just Ru and Ra. The sky was brushed with pink cotton clouds, the ocean cloaked in a pale gold mist. The sky was robin’s egg blue near the water, then changed higher up to something brighter and brassier yet richer and deeper at the same time. Amazing. I placed myself directly in line with the spot where I figured the initial ray would appear, a step down on the breakwater, regrettably not far enough to avoid the “pound pound pound, huff huff huff”, but far enough that it wouldn’t matter once the show started. Then, I waited. Watched. Listened. Marvelled.

A gang of crows were hanging out on the rocks below me. As the eastern halo intensified, one of the crows erupted into “caw caw caw” and the whole flock took wing, buzzing so close to my head that I heard the wind whuffing through their feathers. They landed on the rail that runs along Dallas Road; the ringleader cawed again, and they all turned toward the sun. I was so fascinated by their behaviour that I almost forgot to turn myself. The gulls were doing something similar down in the water, gathering to greet the new day.

The light changed again, the golden halo shrinking and glowing harder, fiercer. The water was still, the birds quiet. No joggers, go figure. Then the first tiny gleam, bright minted gold, peered over the silhouetted houses on the far side of the bay. One single spark—then two, as the shape of a house split the atom; then three as the earth tipped a little further and the topmost arc of the corona rose above the shadow peak. The ocean caught fire, my retinas began to sizzle, and I glanced down to watch the fire line stretch across the water. The clouds turned white. The mist disappeared. The sky assumed a pure polished blue as the sunlight itself gradually eased from intense orange gold to sparkling silver and, finally, to blazing white.

Now, I know that the sun is actually a gargantuan rock roiling with combustible gas and belching fire. I also know that the sun doesn’t move. We do. Sunrise, sunset, and the path in between are optical illusions driven by the earth’s tilt, rotation, and orbit. Daybreak and twilight are a blend of physics and perception. Sometimes I feel as if I am made from the same blend. Someone once told me that I am the calmest person she knows. I was gobsmacked—and oddly touched that she would perceive my energy the way we perceive the sun’s: as a warm and nourishing presence.

I suppose I could laugh it off (I actually think I did), but deep down, her observation stayed with me. So when I watched the sun rise serenely over the ocean that day last week, I remembered what she said … and that it’s a good idea not to get too close.

There’s nothing serene about a billion degree burn.