Don't Look Back

"It’s simple to fall back into bad habits. They’re like glue; they stick and they hold you down.

Once you have made a decision in your mind, the hardest part is running with it. So many factors are there to get in the way.  Did you make the right call? Did you replay all the outcomes in your head? Will this make you happy?

You can ask yourself 1oo questions, but you’ll never really know unless you just go…and never look back."

FP Jana

You know the story of Lot's wife ( of course, unnamed as most of the women in the bible are) who was told not to turn around and look back, and she did, of course, and she was turned to a pillar of salt.  There are other, more ancient stories that have the same analogy - think Medusa.  It seems, as we age, we look back at more positive things rather than clinging to old negative happenings.  How can we ever experience the rush of happiness and joy and love if we are always stealing furtive glances to our past?

Try walking backwards for a few steps.  Good luck!  You will certainly discover that there are things you have missed. Not only that, but we are darned sure to hurt ourselves if we keep it up. 

Look, we were never meant to walk backwards.  Yes, there are things we learned lessons from; those things that whammed us when we were not looking.  Yes, the past can shape our future.   But, see, if you are not looking at the Present and ahead of us, we will put our self and others because we will keep making the same mistakes, the same challenges will revisit us, and can become paralyzed and not progress in a natural way. 

When we renounce our fears, we can move ahead.  If we do not, we take the risk of crashing and burning over and over and over again.  Why can't we obsess about positive things?  We miss so much focusing behind us.  It is time to step out of the Past's shadows.  There is no real sunshine there except those beautiful memories that we sop up with tears of yesterday.  No matter how rough and tough it was, you are here.  You are now.  You have the world in front of you and you need to be alert and Present to grasp it all.  Drop the habits of yesterday and give it a good go to start some new ones... some positive ones that apply to the moment, to the next moment and the next one.  Be prepared rather than same old same old that finally dumps you down to where that place is that has you saying, "Again!"  

Too many people spend too much of their day
Looking over their shoulder
At what they did some other day
It may have been good
It may have been bad
Whichever way it's kinda sad
They can't learn to look some other way

Don't spend too much of today on yesterday
Cos you can't change the past anyway
Just love to live and live life today
Don't spend too much of today on yesterday

There are so many things to do that haven't been done
There are so many ways to go
That you don't have to run
So try on a few
And see how they fit
I think you'll find that they
Won't hurt a bit
Look at things you can do
Instead of what you have done

If you feel life has done you wrong
Just accept it and move on along
Today is too short it won't last
Live life now don't live in the past

-Lobo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WglB-Jsprg

©Carol Desjarlais 5.31.19

Once She Was A Poet

Once She Was A Poet

pressed pen against white skin

of blank poetry  perhaps a sigh

shoved between two blue lines

of veins on back of clenched hand

a quake of such magnitude

keeps me from my poetry

she let hem of skirt sift new sheaves

of grasses     wild weeds

warning to take over    her footprints

pressed into damp earth

leaving evidence

once she was a poet

before grief took her by throat

shook her until her heart broke

tossed her into heavy sky

and let her fall where she may

she learned to walk and talk again

after that bad stroke of luck

but she cannot find that tender place

where lives forests of burnt down seeds

supposed to crack open under heat

he lost her    she lost so much of herself

down cracks and rifts of grinding gone 

creaking timbers    naught but skeletal remains

one might find      when kicking clods

to suddenly find  partly silvered slivers

of something shook in long ago

it moans    deep in guts and gore

of trampled tyranny by a vengeful god

who plucked her blossom

before it was ready to seed

her wrung hands    before they bled

her breasts dry from heave

like a starving child sucking its thumb

to try to pacify a growing gnaw

what ink could be plied from a plundered well

what tap to be turned     what thread to pull

what hole to dig     what ash to air

what hand to writhe   to pull a poem

from dry dead heart that caved in on itself

and quivers

afraid to set off such storm again

©Carol Desjarlais 5.20.19

Emotional Aging

“Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.”
                                                                                       ― Oliver Wendell

As we age our consciousness ages with us.  Our genetics may have something to do with it as I see some commonalities with my birth siblings and mother that have me believe some is.  But, it is us that makes conscious choices to evolve or not, emotionally.  I think it depends, as well, on our emotional experiences, emotional patterns and challenges, that we have gone through in life.  I think part of our defensive mechanisms and our ability to heal may have some of this as well.  When I think of commonalities of siblings, I see that we also have to consider perspectives.  For instance, my being a given away child had me experience the giving away differently than my older siblings who knew or experienced it happen.  There are commonalities but each of us had our own choices of emotions to develop and then manage or not manage.  At our core might be some genetics but in our living and aging there are new experiences that pile up day by day on to these core beliefs and inheritances.  I think we begin, early, to regulate the emotions we express and those emotions are supposed to mature as we age; at least, ideally, and, at least, hopefully.  I think we learn to regulate them.

I am thinking, as well, that we learn how to manipulate with emotions when we are tiny and are equipped with crying to express those emotions.  As we age, and grow more independent, we refine our emotional responses.  We learn to take note of emotional things, we learn to remember those emotions to those things we experience, and those emotions become guides that we refine; our response to experiences, I mean.  I am wondering if the fear of spiders, moths, and, yes, clowns, and those things that are not life or death that we hold fear of, might come from those earliest times in our lives.  Not sure; but thinking such.  Perhaps the most things we emotionally react to might all have had earliest childhood triggers. Then, we refine those emotional activating things as we age and gain maturity and logical reasoning's for that which we react too, or not.  I think as our intelligence grows and is filled, we drop some of our emotional reactions to many things.  That is not to say we do not pick up some new ones, but I think an emotional child does become an emotional adult.  It does not mean we throw ourselves on the ground and wail and flail, but we may have learned a way to block the irrational emotional outbreaks by using such things as denial, minimalizing, etc.  We begin to self-regulate, or should.

As we age, and later on into aging, I think we tend to deal with more immediate, Present, emotional things.  I think, perhaps, we adjust to stop crises-thinking and fear/flight from absolutely overwhelming us, because, it could.  Perhaps we sense a nearness to the end of our time and perhaps we select those things to emotionally act/react on.  Perhaps we want peace and serenity and grace so much that we choose to minimize the negatives as much as we can.  

Life will always have ups and downs and our own lives will have the same.  It is a given.  Some of our reactions that have been unconscious, will sort themselves out for themselves, some we have to sort out for ourselves.  Emotional behavior is lifelong learned as a skill or a hindrance.  I think our illogical/logical emotional reactions go hand in hand with our self-confidence.  We learn strategies to deal with our emotional responses.  

Perhaps we know what is worthy, finally, of our deeply rooted attention and that which is worthy of our responses, and at what level of response is wisest to attach to it all.  Exposure to stress simply demands some kind of reaction.  We know what makes us feel whatever we choose to feel. We have grown up with our emotions as our oldest thought and those beliefs and actions and reactions make us the unique people we are.  We begin to monitor who and what we might be exposed to, for we know ourselves well.   We try to find positive reinforce-rs and try to minimize the negative ones. 

I have this fear that my negative responses to life might end up being the one that shows up the most as I lose more and more of my faculties.  I am doing some crash courses in knowing myself well enough to know how to change some of my reactions to some of my stressors.  One of my negative emotional defenses is to feel defensive.  Lord, have mercy; will I never feel 'Enough'?  I work on this every time I sense a response coming from within.  I have to ask myself if it is worth it.  Usually it is not!  Some day, when I grow up, I hope to have this emotional aging thing sorted out, for others' sake, if not my own.

©Carol Desjarlais 5.28.19

Wise Women

THE SENILITY PRAYER: Grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference. - author unknown

I think wisdom of elder sisters comes slowly, mine did, and I did not realize I was really wise until, one day, I realized what things I had conquered.  As well, I knew that it was, almost suddenly, time to truly be Present, to be authentically real, to be aware in a deep level that comes from 'been there; done that!"  Suddenly there is a vague gnawing that this is my life and every morning is the only day I have to change what I need to change about myself.  I think Life prepares us for all the choices we made and their consequences.  Truly, we become Wise Old Birds.

Never mind the woulda, coulda, shoulda's.  You did not!  No discussion, no shame, no guilt, no way!  You did what you did, you chose what you chose, you lived it out and it either worked or not and you lived any past repercussions already.  You cannot fix it and, perhaps, others fixed residuals already and no use holding on to it now.   It sure would have been easier if we had forgiven our self for stuff a long time ago instead of hauling it around with us like a ball and chain.  Yes, maybe we are still angry about something in our past, but of what use is that?  No one else can fix stuff from your past, erase it, or, maybe they do not even think about it, never mind feel anything for it.  Some things will stay imprinted on your very skin; wrinkles, the story of so many things.  Lord, we have learned some lessons, or not, but they were there to learn and maybe we learn that we have learned them now.

Say this out loud:

"Man, I have done some things!"  

What inflection did you use?  Did you say it sadly?  Did you say it with laughter in your voice?  Did you say it with a satisfied sigh?  How did you say it is the key to how much you are living in the past, in your head.  It dictates how you feel about yourself.   Now try it with all the inflections.  Which feels more Present?  How you say it will tell you how much you have learned.  Perhaps we need to learn those lessons now.

There were wisdoms all along the journey of our life.  Our fears came to naught or they came true.  Most of our fears find a way to work themselves out.  We learned not to force things.  We learned to accept things.  When fear stepped in, we either learned a huge lesson or we moved into paralysis and we kept those fears tucked in dark places of our soul and waited for someone else to solve them for us, or we simply got over it.  

In the movie, Meet Joe Black, he, Death, visits an old Jamaican lady who is ready to die.  She recognizes him as Death.  

Jamaican Woman : Hmm. It nice it happen to you. Like you come to the island and had a holiday. Sun didn't burn you red-red, just brown. You sleep, and no mosquito eat you. But the truth is, it bound to happen... if you stay long enough. So take that nice picture you got in your head home with you, but don't be fooled. We lonely here mostly too. If we lucky, maybe... we got some nice pictures to take with us.

This movie is a classic beloved movie to me.  There are some beautiful scenes and there is a beautiful script in it.  I think that this movie really changed my thoughts about Past events and I came to journey apiece with Peace with my Past. I began to focus on the photographs rather than the negatives.

Suddenly we find ourselves worrying about the future (if we are compulsive worriers rather than optimists).  We can totally know that we are worrying unnecessarily, but we will spiral down with our worries the moment we give our Lizard Brain the chance.  I think we, women, tend to think we need to solve everything and so we fuss and fret over things we never did find a solution to.  I do know that worrying makes me feel older.  I am pretty sure I could worry myself into a panic.  Would it solve anything?  No!  It just leads to a spiral of unhappiness and fuss and fret, and earlier aging, nothing more.  It robs us of a positive future.  

I am wise enough to now, the more I let others take care of me, the less certain I am becoming in taking care of myself when I am more than older.  I think we are still bound to old societal views and actions towards the elderly.  Our views belong to our mothers, to our grandmothers, and though we are the New Age Women, we still have Old Age views in many ways.  Remember that we Baby Boomer women grew up in the breaking free of old ways and we were still babies at breaking free of old ways of being and being looked at as subservient.  This subservience keeps us up at night, believe it or not.  We worry about being alone, unattached, and being able to do it all for ourselves.  Herein lies some of our worry about the future, our futures:  We are still tied to the ideology that we need to be taken care of.  

The wisdom of old age, I believe, comes from the epiphanies we have when we quiet the mind.  Sisters, we have gained a depth of experience that our mothers and grandmothers never faced.  Not worse, not better, but different.  Our strength has been honed by our experiences, if we have sought solutions rather than more problems.  We have gained Self-empowerment from our Past if we truly look at the whole of our lives rather than just moments when we were most vulnerable.  There was always more to it.  Our anxieties of the Past have no place in our lives any more.  Now we truly learn to put one foot in front of the other.  We cannot stay stuck in the mud of anxiety and isolation.  We need to interact with life, even more than we interacted with the problems of our lives that came before.  We are wise women.  We do not need to avoid life.  Life will happen whether we pretend/deny it doesn't.  We are wise women.  We are wise women.  I am a wise woman. I know 'stuff', you do too.  

Now, say that out loud: 

"I am a wise woman!"

©Carol Desjarlais 5.27.19

About the movie, Meet Joe Black:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119643/?ref_=tt_ch

The Jamaican Woman's Poignant Knowing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0aXbwnoQd0