A Case for Optimism

 

A friend recently commented about a longing for something to be optimistic about.

That comment brought me back to my center. She was right.  Many of us teeter on the edge of trying to be optimistic and positive to being a realist and seeing things in all their ugliness.  I think she was saying “How about more of the optimism and less of the ugly”.  I agree.

In order to find optimism, it’s helpful for me to set goals that are realistic.  Realistic goals make achieving them more likely.  To use a life example I’ve written about extensively, I set health goals that are realistic for me, not for a 22 year old young man.

So what are my realistic goals about the coming election?  I’m going to lay out my personal aspirations.  If you find anything there you can grab, then do it.

I believe that there will be some awesome opportunities regardless of who our next president is. 

Either scenario (my preferred candidate wins, or the other candidate wins) will provide a wealth of valuable situations.  This is where the friend I mentioned brought me back to my center.  One of my gifts lies in speaking to the idea of reconciliation between opposing positions. The root of that is multifaceted.  Part of it is my personality, part of it is a love for reconciliation based out of my faith, and part of it has to do with my firm stance right in the middle of the political spectrum. Not everyone finds themselves either with my personality (thankfully) or in the middle of that spectrum.  I’m fully aware of that, but being there makes me especially prone to seeing the prospect of future opportunities and a reason to be optimistic.

I’m optimistic that in my small world - the world of my neighbors, my friends, my family, my co-workers, my acquaintances - we will work together through whatever the new administration brings, regardless of who that is.  We will do that with civility, with kindness, with understanding.

There will be plenty of these opportunities.  It won’t be easy, but easy doesn’t promote growth, challenge does. What does easy look like?  It looks like whatever we tend to fall into that we’ve always done. It looks like regurgitating tired old talking points.  It looks like talking past each other with our opinions, and not listening to each other’s point of view.  It looks like the things we have done that got us here. Easy looks like focusing on our differences.

What does hard look like?  Hard involves giving each other the room to have a different opinion, without attaching a character judgement based on that opinion. Hard involves trying to find the things we CAN agree on. Hard involves a focus on the things we have in common.

Can progress be made, or am I just naïve?  I’ve discussed attempts to curtail the effects of aging.  Guess what?  I’m pretty sure there are ways I am physically stronger than I was at 22.  And also guess what?  I fight stiffness and occasional pain in my lower back every single day of my life, and I will never progress the way a 22 year old would even with twice the effort. Are my attempts to curtail aging misguided and naïve?  I will age, regardless of my efforts, but there is something I can do.  I can refuse to age without a fight. That fight, without a doubt, is worth the effort.

It's no different with our thinking.  We can let age take its course, and very naturally take the easy path. We can refuse to adjust, refuse to question our conclusions, refuse to admit that just maybe we don’t always hold the perfect position or understand our foes perfectly. 

Or, we can do the hard work of fighting against our own natural tendencies.

We’ve talked before about “Doing Hard Stuff”.  Folks, that’s our life.  And we are about to get even more opportunities to do that exercise.  I don’t mean to simply frame our situation in a clever way. I’m saying “hard” is good for us.  “Hard” makes us grow. “Hard” separates those who are willing to progress from those who aren’t. We haven’t done “hard” very well in the past.  Just maybe we can do “hard” differently.  Maybe we can do it better.

Optimism.  We aren’t talking about a world where things are better in terms of our definition of “good”.  We’re talking about the opportunity to be changed, to grow, to be involuntarily placed in situations that will force us to decide who we are, what we represent, and whether, as an increasingly diverse people, if we can forge a better path forward.

Embracing “hard” isn’t natural for most of us.  I say let’s walk towards it, with enthusiasm, and with optimism, even if it results in nothing more than our own individual growth. We can’t control the response we receive, but we sure as heck can decide what we will do.

The Value of Work... From a Different Perspective

Chapter 91424

 

We had been discussing an issue involving my work, which I don’t care to share in the interest of not wanting it all out there.  Something about my responses must have seemed out of the ordinary. The friend asked a simple question: 

“Besides work, how are you? I mean I feel you are not OK; I might be wrong.”

It was a perceptive observation.  I wondered how they knew.

The following day, to be transparent as well as to lay out the thoughts going through my head, I jotted down and shared 15 points to elaborate on that conversation.  The last three were these:

12) I don’t know that I’m “sad”. I am burdened, preoccupied, in deep contemplation. As a result, I become less talkative, less free to relax. Being in a happy relaxed state makes me talkative. I am not feeling happy and relaxed.

14) These are ugly American problems.

15) The fact they are even “problems” in my mind is annoying to me.

The friend responded to a few of the items on my treatise, which led to this comment:

“I am talking about your rewards as well. You are Brent the human who should and cannot not be selfish, you are not Jesus."

To which I responded:

“Thanks for clarifying I am not Jesus.”

And then the friend gave me this treasure of a summation of what I stand for:

My generation doesn’t know enough about the “process”… The process of reading a book and coming to a conclusion. We have Instagram and YouTube summarizing the book that gives us the final conclusion. We don’t know the process of cooking a nice meal, we either buy fast food, or when we cook, we buy ready cut vegetables, ready to boil pasta, mix them together and eat in 10 minutes. We don’t know the process of fixing a shirt, we send it to someone to fix it for five dollars or actually we just drop it off and buy a new one. We don’t know even how to process our thoughts and feelings. We also drink cola with food to digest the food faster. We don’t appreciate the concept of a process.

Why am I saying this? The kind of work that you do is rare and weird for someone like me. You take care of the measuring, the materials, the design, the layers, the planning, step by step, and then achieve the final result.

Why am I saying this? Because people like you forget the value of their work.

Why am I also saying this? Because when you engage me to choose what color to put in your kids’ play yard, it is super useful for me…to remember the details and small choices of life.

In a nutshell, whatever you do in the coming year, it should be documented somewhere, and shared with people like me, to (help me) remember that there are difficulties in the things I take for granted, and to remember that life is all about making small changes/decisions every single point of the day.

People like you….  nobody knows them because they live the life instead of talking about it.

Whatever happens during the year, let’s start documenting the small projects, that’s called simply... life.

In other words, all the “ugly Americans” problems that you just described are not digestible all at once. Let them be digested slowly, and let’s let the process work itself out.

Let’s keep reflecting.

What is the value of my work? Remember when you told me that you spend time with elderly people feeling lonely? How would anyone in my stupid shallow generation go to this point of life?

Impossible.

We need your help, I mean it.

We forgot how to live a normal life.

It’s a super fast crazy world, and a project you have that takes a week or two, could help us to remember that behind our two crazy weeks, there is life happening, naturally, slowly.

I think you get the conclusion of my long speech.

 Needless to say, I was touched.  I responded with the appropriate expression of appreciation:

It’s a beautiful speech and I appreciate it so much.

The conclusion is that I am an old slow man.

Doing Hard Stuff

There are plenty of hard things we do out of necessity.  Making a living is hard.  Raising kids is hard.  Managing health care is excruciatingly hard.  And then there are hard things we do which fall into another category.  We choose them. That particular thing is a choice.

First, a plea.  Hear me out and trust me that I’ll take you somewhere. I wish I could tell you this in reverse order, giving you the end first, but I can’t.

Let’s just get this out of the way first:  I am an amateur in the area of weight training. I moved from being a life-long runner to weight training partly because I grew tired of my doctor advising that I find another form of activity.

I enjoyed distance running because I am not particularly skilled or competitive.  While running can involve both of those aspects, it doesn’t have to.  You can just decide how many days you want to run, decide on a distance for that run, and maybe choose a particular pace.

Enter weight training.  It’s a whole other beast. So many decisions… how many days to work out, which exercises to do, how many repetitions for each exercise, how much weight to use for those exercises, and when to increase weight. Then there’s proper technique for each of those exercises, as poor technique makes the lift less effective, or you end up injured.

While distance running can indeed be technical, weight training, at least the way I go about the two, is much more so. That was part of what attracted me to it the further I got.  That is what kept me in it when the results were less than ideal.

I started weight training from a terribly weak position. Part of that is my body type – ectomorph – which means I’m naturally tall and thin (at least thin in my younger days) and my body resists gaining muscle. The other part is something I learned from studying about weight training.  Your body adapts to what you ask it to do.  I had asked my body to run long distances since I was about 21 years of age.  The effect of that is your body figures out how to run in the most efficient way.  Subsequently, you drop muscle you don’t need for that activity.  Running was really the only type of training I did, apart from a little biking.  As I got older, I began to feel the effects of all those years of running.

I started weight training slowly, with just a few exercises, and added new ones over time.  I sought a lot of advice, and still do.  In no time at all, I began to bulk up.

Wrong.  I did not bulk up, even a tiny bit, even after two years. Two years into it, I realized that the word bulky would never be a word used to describe my physique.

I did, however, very slowly get stronger. I know that for a fact because I document my workouts on a spreadsheet, in an OCD type of way.  After all those years of using spreadsheets for various record keeping tasks, I found the perfect use for them.

So where does this fit into the idea of doing difficult things?  We’re getting there, and you don’t have to do resistance training to get it.

An interesting thing happens when you weight train, or really when you train in any physical way – you become hypersensitive to what your body is telling you.  You want to avoid injury. Early on I received warnings about being careful with specific areas, especially the shoulders.  I also entered into the process naturally cautious about my lower back, which had always been a source of soreness.

Weight training naturally produces some soreness which isn’t unusual or unhealthy.  Occasionally though, the discomfort can be related to damage that isn’t healthy.  The trick is to know when that is happening and know what to do when it does. 

A balance has to be struck. If you don’t push hard enough, there is no gain, no growth.  If you push too hard, there’s a risk of injury, and a regression of growth.

This brings me to the other aspect of weight training that I find so attractive.  I see it as a reflection of the challenges of life.

It took me a long time to wrap my head around the concept that challenges and difficult situations are good for us. As a child, I probably viewed those things as a nuisance to either avoid or to get through. I failed to understand their necessity, and their benefit. As I grew older, I slowly began to catch on.  Was I slower than normal?  I don’t know. 

Some difficulties come our way, beyond our control.  They end up being beneficial, but we would never volunteer to enter into them.

There are other difficult situations we enter into voluntarily.  We make the choice. Sometimes you see this behavior early on in a person's life. That wasn’t me.

When we make that decision to intentionally put ourselves in a difficult, stressful, challenging position, we set ourselves up for growth.  However, just like any physical training, we must strike a balance between the right amount of stress, and too much stress.

That balance is the trick.  Parents are often good at helping their children keep things in balance, but mistakes can be made in either direction.  Parents can be overprotective and prevent their children from being challenged.  On the other hand, they can be hesitant to protect their children from over committing.

Once we are out from under the wings of our parents, these decisions are left up to us.  We either determine to do it all on our own, or we draft others to continue to advise us to remain in balance. The concept of maturity and independence often inhibits that process.

And there’s the rub.  We eventually come to understand that a continual progression involves understanding the necessity of challenges to promote our own growth.  At the same time, we are taught that independence and maturity are qualities we should aspire to achieve. We attempt to combine the two ideas, and to decide for ourselves where that balance lies between enough challenge and too much challenge.

That struggle, in a physical way, is illustrated for me every day I weight train.  Whether I want to or not, I am constantly given feedback of where I stand, of how the training is affecting me.  Every day I must choose to make adjustments.

Since, as I said, I’m an amateur, it is easy for me to seek help when I need it. Yes, perhaps as I learn more, I may need less assistance, but if you do even a little amount of research about the sport, you understand that there is always someone who understands it better.

I think we are tempted to think that at some age, we understand most of what there is to understand.  That is the intuitive approach to the situation: given enough time, we will understand everything. That, without a doubt, sounds like a dangerous place to be.

Since, as I mentioned, I have a certain body type.  Along with that, I’m well into the age where our bodies don’t want to progress and become stronger.  The result is that I am a prime candidate for working hard and seeing very slow, often minimal, results. But that’s o.k., because to use an old cliché, it builds character. It’s hard.  Doing hard stuff builds character.  Wait, what?  Come on Brent, you’re talking about a physical activity.  It’s physical.

Humph.  I beg to differ. Hard stuff is hard stuff, period. Why do we encourage our kids to get involved in extracurricular activities in school?  What lasting impact do years of ballet lessons or little league or playing an instrument have?  They are transformative,  I say.  They teach kids to learn to do difficult things in life.  Should we stop doing those things as adults?  Heck no.

And call me an idiot, but I need to be reminded that much of what we do in life is not about seeing immediate results.  We do the thing because it’s our calling, it’s the right thing to do.  The results may not be for us to see. This is perhaps one of the greatest benefits I get from weight training – I am reminded every day that I live the way I do, I do the things I do, I hold the beliefs I do… because it’s the right thing to do… not because I’m rewarded by results. 

At what age do we stop doing difficult things?  At what age does learning from doing difficult things cease? 

Well, not at 63.

So my challenge to you is to do hard stuff.  It doesn’t have to be physical.  It just has to be a challenge. Do something different, something new, something outside of your comfort zone. And then, don’t stop because you don’t see the results you crave.  Continue because it’s right.

Visiting Margaret

 

It’s typical for college students to do a career related job prior to graduating, so around the fall of 1981 I searched for such a position for the following summer to put on my resume and add to my life experience.  I was about to finish my bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice, and although I had no real intention in going into law enforcement, I got hired to work as a summer police officer in a small sleepy beach town close to home. The position filled two roles – it was paid, and it filled a requirement for a “field experience” for my degree.

I credit Margaret Patten with helping me secure that position, along with May Felerski who was the town clerk.  Both women had known my parents, and no doubt those friendships aided in the process.  Margaret was also very good friends with the chief of police, Randall Foskey.

The summer went by interestingly enough, but that’s not the point of this story.  The point is Margaret.

Margaret lived alone in a small modest house in town.  I stopped by almost every shift to say hello.  During those visits, she would give me a cold drink and sometimes dinner.  But mostly she shared her life story with me.  I can’t recall the exact details, but Margaret had either become part of a city gang (the location escapes my memory) for the purpose of sharing her faith, or she had found her faith while part of the gang.  She even had a tattoo on her upper arm to indicate her dedication to this gang, which she wore proudly.

Coincidentally, I took a college class with a professor who did her doctoral studies on gang behavior, and had joined a gang as part of her studies. Looking back now, I don’t know why the thought of discussing Margaret with this professor never occurred to me.

At the time, I didn’t have a clue what Margaret was doing. I didn’t understand her motivation, or her interest in having me stop by.  I just thought she was an old lady who enjoyed company.

It’s only now that I get it.  Margaret was discipling me.  She was attempting to pour what she had learned about life into my life.  As with many things I experienced as a youth, I didn’t fully appreciate it at the time. I didn’t even have the sense to ask her good questions. What I did do right was to listen.

I lost touch with Margaret after that summer.  She passed without me affirming to her that she had impacted my life, that her efforts were in fact noticed.

So I say it now…. I understand what you were doing Margaret.  You did so much more than simply add my life experience. Thank you.

Social Media Isolation and the Attempt to Re-build.

 

A while back, I decided to limit my browsing and interactions on Facebook.  My viewing became mostly limited to perusing Marketplace for things I didn't need.  I will often glance at the first FB post at the top of the feed, but that's about it.  I have resisted the urge to comment on anything. 

The fruit of that experiment is multi-faceted.  I'll spare you the long version, and go with bullet points:

• In time, I found that I enjoyed not being triggered by posts and feeling the need to add a comment. This is what Facebook is so good at - triggering us.  It's not just Facebook posts which are designed to do that, it's that we sometimes trigger each other to respond. The triggering isn't necessarily bad... it's just triggering. That responding to being triggered is addictive.  Don't miss that, not one bit.
  
• I do not miss the guilt of feeling like I just wasted "X" number of minutes on Facebook.  This was a frequent sensation of mine.  Why, you ask, did I wait so long if that was the case?
• I have been reading more.  A friend of mine regularly sends me books to read, apparently in an effort to keep me sharp.  He's a good friend, but I don't know that it's working.  It's a good effort.
• As mentioned, the guilt of wasting time perusing Facebook dissipated.  I spend more time reading the news.  This has relieved my guilt, but made me more aware of things I'd prefer to be in the dark about.
• You all have gotten the benefit of not hearing about things which are of little interest to anyone else.  This has decreased your own guilt of having wasted your time reading about them.
  

 
 But alas, it is not all good:

• I am stuck with perusing Marketplace.  I should apply bullet point #2 above, starting now.  This is likely related to the FOMO on the best deal ever on a motorcycle. The reason for this is probably two-fold:  it is by design by Facebook, and it is in my genes from my dad. 
• I have been writing much less. This is no doubt due to the feeling I have no audience to interact with since I'm avoiding Facebook. This part I hate, because when I write less, there is a level of analysis in my thinking that I may not get to.
  
• To be honest, I feel unconnected to the group of people I normally interact with on Facebook, and I do miss putting in my two cents in. I'm certain my two cents are greatly missed.
  

 

The picture you see is a re-building of an old play area we used for our kids.  We had disassembled that play area a while back and set the 4' x 6' platform (no legs... just the platform) aside for future use.  We built this new one based off that platform for our grandchildren. For anyone interested, I can supply a captioned picture of the details of this magnificent creation.

Doris Moore - 1936 - 2024: The Rule of Firsts

 

Doris Moore

December 13, 1936 – April 9, 2024

 

 Best I can tell, I met Doris Moore on September 5, 1967, the day I walked into John M. Clayton School for my first day of the First Grade.  That’s roughly 56 ½ years ago. According to Doris, she took an immediate liking to me based on the fact I parted my hair on the right side. 

Doris had moved to Sussex County from North Carolina soon after she graduated from college. Her landing of the job at John M. Clayton was a bit of a fluke, as she was actually on her way to explore a position in a different location (as I recall). She forever spoke with a distinct southern drawl.

Firsts are almost always memorable, which is science, based on the fact that there is no previous information embedded in our brains for that particular experience.  Therefore, a lot of information is deposited, given the fact this is the first time one has encountered this particular situation.

The byproduct of that process is that I can almost visualize some of the worksheets Miss Doris would pass out to us in the morning.  Their number was roughly 10-12, and they smelled of mimeograph ink, an odor that was not only unique, but which created the irresistible urge to hold the paper under one’s nose.  Any possibly damaging effects of inhaling that ink odor has never been discussed, as this was the age before lawsuits.

Fast forward to my senior year in high school.  Although I had not remained in close contact with Miss Doris, I sent her an announcement of my graduation in June of 1979.  I felt it was important for her to know I had managed to finish school.  She responded by showing up at our house with a gift.  That red Igloo cooler was perhaps the most memorable gift I received for graduation.

Fast forward again to about 1998.  We had started having Christmas Open Houses in our home, and for reasons which escape my memory, I invited Miss Doris to come.  To our delight, she arrived with her life-long housemate Myra. While they visited, the type of work I do came up in conversation, and Doris and Myra immediately asked that I come over to discuss some work they needed done.

Once that work started, it continued for years. We worked on many big and small projects around the house, including a new roof, new windows, and new vinyl siding.  We added windows to their front porch. We converted their tub into a shower and updated the rest of the bathroom. We updated the kitchen. 

We also did some unconventional things.  We built outdoor enclosures for a few of their outdoor cats.  Doris would often comment that I had probably never been asked to build such housing for cats.  I hadn’t, but the effort seemed to bring her great pleasure.  Her cats apparently were pleased as well.

That was just work though.  Doris and Myra needed work done, and I needed the income.  We all got those things. 

Mostly though, we got each other. The work was just an avenue to share our lives. 

Doris and Myra were both retired by the time I started working on their house. Their summer trips in their RV had also come to an end. They had time on their hands, and I had the privilege of occupying some of that time. In all the things I have done regarding work, this was easily some of the most satisfying. I always looked forward to it, I always felt I had met a need, and I always felt appreciated.

 At some point early on in this period, I wrote Doris a letter.  I can’t recall the specifics of that letter, but I do recall her response to it.  She made a point of telling me how well I had expressed myself, and encouraged me to write more often.  I took that advice to heart, and her words may in fact be responsible for helping develop my love of communicating through the written word.

Eventually the bulk of the work on the house was completed, and Doris and Myra would call me less frequently for smaller jobs.  I was especially pleased if this coincided with the Christmas season, as Doris loved to bake cookies, especially chocolate chip, which fed her love of chocolate.

Often in conversation, her love of cars and driving would come up. She would tell me about the cars she drove as a youth.  She had to stop driving a year or two ago, which irked her to no end. She would comment about this, and about other inconveniences with “Well, it was good while it lasted.”

A year or so ago when I came to the house, Myra pulled me aside to discuss Doris’s health.  She was beginning to show signs of dementia. At that point I began to make occasional trips to visit apart from any work. As her health began to decline more rapidly, I stepped up the frequency of those visits.

Doris always knew who I was, even towards her latter days, but over time I would need to remind her of things.  She once said “Do I know you from way back?”  I reminded her of our relationship, showed her the picture of the two of us I had given her, and grabbed the mug I had given her with our picture.  The jolt always brought back the memories.

I believe the last time I spoke to Doris was while sitting in her living room on March 14.  She asked me about my family, and wanted to know the sum total of our kids and grandkids.  I reminded her, several times in the same conversation. During that visit, Myra commented that Doris had asked about me, and when I would return.  She referred to me, not by my name which I’m sure had escaped her, but as the “tall white haired good looking guy”.

On Friday, April 5, Myra called to tell me Doris was in the hospital.  Myra was going over that morning.  When I arrived, she was in Doris’ room.  I waited outside, and decided not to go in, as by that point Doris was barely coherent.  Instead, I sat with Myra and another friend of hers, and we talked about the current state of affairs. 

I got word through my brother that Doris passed peacefully early in the morning of April 9. I immediately called Myra, and we talked about our old friend and the fact she was finally at rest.

It occurred to me that in all those years, I had never told Doris that I loved her. But honestly, while I wish I had, there is no doubt in my mind that Doris knew I did.  I may not have used the words, but I told her as much over our long life together.

I told her through the work I did for her and Myra.  I told her through the little gifts of pictures and mugs and cookies.  I told her through the short visits to catch up. I told her through sitting and listening to the stories of her life. It was also obvious to me that she loved me as well. She told me through her questions about my family, through her thank you notes, and through the delight I could clearly see in her at having me in her home.  Sometimes, after I had done something, she loved to say to me "As my daddy would say... you done good, son."

It was no fluke Doris and Myra landed here in Sussex County. They were meant to be right here.

For the written record Doris… I love you.  Rest well my old friend.