People Are Mean

Bear with me here. This is not a rant or a "mean people suck" diatribe.

But people are mean. Even when we're not mean spirited, we're mean.

We unknowingly say things that tear at the raw emotions of people who are struggling, and then walk away oblivious to what we've done.

And we knowingly say cutting things when we feel threatened - as if jabbing at a weak spot in someone bigger, stronger, better will make us bigger, stronger, better, too.

I know people who will say that actions must be intentional to be mean, that an unintentional slight is unfortunate and embarrassing but not really mean.

And I know people who will say that the self-preservational things we say and do when we feel threatened cannot be considered mean. They're the visceral reactions of a cornered animal, not mean.

But I call it mean. Unavoidably mean.

Why are we mean? We're mean because we're broken. It's as simple as that. And it's neither defeatist nor pessimistic to accept the unavoidable capacity for meanness that is the broken human race.

In fact, it's easier to be empathetic when you can accept that we're all in the same broken boat, each of us doing the best we can in the moment. Empathy enables forgiveness. And forgiveness offsets meanness. 

Too many people get caught in an endless loop of trying to fix what's cosmically broken rather than acknowledging that brokenness cannot be easily fixed. Why not reach into your stockpile of empathy to find the power to forgive the people who've been mean to you?

The ghost of diets past

My earliest memories of diets and calorie restrictions revolve around Ayds diet candies and Roman Meal bread.

Ayds (pronounced "aids") was an individually wrapped candy that was either an appetite suppressant or a placebo. It had a very strong presence in my childhood home in the early 70s. I clearly remember the chocolate and caramel flavors nibbled before meals by my mother and older sister, usually with a nice hot cup of coffee. I was a kid - somewhere in the 5 to 7 year old range - and I'd sneak in and chow down on those candies by the handful. They were tasty and, I'm sure, oh so chemical. Probably accounts for the tics and recurrent blackouts today. Ayds candies would surely have fallen out of market favor by now even if the public image disaster of having a product name pronounced the same way as a dread disease hadn't driven the product off the shelves.

Roman Meal was a wheat sandwich bread at a time when all I remember seeing on grocery store shelves was white, white, white. It screamed diet with its darker color and the Roman Meal Diet Plan. I think you could write to the address on the package for the diet plan. It may have been included in some packages. We found the Roman Meal Diet Plan in my grandmother's papers when she died in 1995. As "diets" go, it's a reasonable eating plan. At least it lists real foods. Of course, slices of Roman Meal bread feature prominently. It includes black coffee or tea at every meal, never mentions a glass of water. My grandmother must have been an extremely caffeinated woman.

And there was the summer of great weight loss. I think it was the summer I turned 11. I was a healthy kid, a solid kid. I was growing into a pudgy kid when Dr. Eaves told my mother that if a girl did not lose extra poundage before puberty set in she was doomed to fight the weight monster for life. Those hormonal changes would make it more difficult. From that appointment day through the rest of my summer vacation, my mother was in a mad race against my pubes. I remember gallons of Shasta diet drinks - lemon lime, black cherry, root beer - and chef salad after chef salad. I did lose weight. I also lost inches, helped in that by a growth spurt that summer. But I shudder to think of the artificial sweeteners and artificial colors I downed that summer. I can't remember drinking water. I probably swallowed a good bit of chlorinated water swimming in my cousin's pool, but I don't think that counts.

Swirling throughout this memory mish-mash, there are a few memories of receiving praise for sticking with it or looking good. That's a minor part of the memory gel. Most of the memories involve that panicked race against puberty (at which point I think I would go from chubby child to fat woman and... I don't know.... maybe give up on life or something?) and the womanly unity I felt with my mother and sister and other female relatives (who were usually either "on a diet" or had recently fallen "off a diet") in looking for a quick fix. Some thing that would fix our bodies without really engaging our minds. Oh yeah, and we didn't relish sweating.

Resistance is futile, puny earthling.

More stress. Drama at work.

Did you think drama would end when you graduated from middle school? From high school?

Did you think it would end when you tore the pages out of that sad old diary you called a journal and trashed them because the embarrassment of reading your own histrionic words made your cheeks flush and your stomach hurt a little bit?
HA! Resistance is futile, puny earthling. The wind cries MaryDrama!

With impeccable timing, Leo Babauta at Zen Habits just posted about sticking to a habit when life falls apart.

Leo's list is common-sense, affirmative, not all that different from the stuff I've I've said right here in previous blog posts.

The take home message is not that life stuff can happen to derail your plans. I think the take home message is that life stuff WILL happen to derail your plans.

Let go of the stone tablet and grab hold of the sandy beach. You build a sand castle, the tide washes it away, and then you build another.

Your treasure is not the impermanent sand castle.

Ode to a Spotted Dog

In my last blog post, I said I'd post about accountability.

The very next day. Accountability, community, and competition.

It's not the next day, and I haven't held myself accountable.

But I've been human.

My dog died. That simple statement carries more depth of emotion and implication for my life than most people realize.

Let me tell you about Hannah.

I committed to Hannah the first time I met her and decided to bring her home. I told her that I would be there for her until the very end. She could count on the fact that I would not throw her away and I would do the best I could for all the days we knew each other.

I committed to love her before I actually loved her.

I secretly doubted I could ever fully love her. Hannah was a wild woman - a smiling, spotted, running at 50 miles per hour, waking me up before dawn to go walk and run in the icy January air, chewing through her leash if I stood still for too long, eating all the little plastic ends off my shoelaces, honest-to-goodness wild woman.

And then I set myself up to love her. Granted, it was easy because she was lovable.

And she had a moment, a visible moment soon after we met, of deciding to trust me and join my pack. That made it even easier. It's always easier to love someone who's loving you back.

I was consistent in my love for Hannah and in the life activities associated with having a dog. That proves I can be consistent, right?

Hannah seemed to age quickly over the past year. And for the last 4-6 months, she'd required a lot of personal care. A lot of coaxing her to eat tasty morsels. More trips outside in the middle of the night. From symptoms she'd slowly developed over the last 4-5 years, I think Hannah had a brain tumor that reached critical mass this year. The nature of her ailment was definitely neurological.

An impromptu portrait

Spotted Dog sleeps, Spotted Dog dreams

Hannah was with me when I got this blog idea. She lay beside me, in a companionable way that only good dogs can, as I jotted notes. I knew time with Hannah was short when I was prompted to doodle a pencil portrait of her curled up and sleeping in a sunbeam last fall.

As I watched the elderly Hannah doze, I remembered the young active Hannah. She had the heart of an athlete and a natural tendency toward healthy lifestyle. I'd often said that I'd be a much healthier and happier person if I just lived life like Hannah the dog.

 

When Stress Derails Your Plans

Things have been stressful in my world for awhile now. Hannah's illness and the disruption to my schedule has just pushed it over the top. I'm a stress eater. A stress crap eater. It's not that I eat so much more, it's that I eat all the wrong things.

I'm also a stress "curl up in a ball and try to sleep to pretend the stresses are not there" person. You don't burn many calories or rev ye ole metabolism or build much lean muscle when you curl up in a ball in the dark. It turns out you don't even sleep all that well.

I'd lost about 5 pounds when I had to make the hard decision to let Hannah go. I could beat myself up for losing my momentum, for staying away from my exercise class. But that's not the spotted dog way. Remember, it's always easier to love someone who's loving you back. I figure that means it will be easier to love myself if I love myself. (Take that, circular logic haters!)

Savor the sunbeams!

So I'll get back on track when I can and remember this smiling healthy face and all the joy it brought me. I leave you with a half-dozen of Hannah's rules for a happy life.

1. Choose running and playing over eating a big meal.
2. Refrain from drinking. (I swear she got a look of distaste and scorn when I let her sniff a beer.)
3. Enjoy the time with your pack.
4. Head to bed at the stroke of 10:00 and sleep peacefully in your own bed. (She slept through the theft of my car from the driveway in August 2005, but in her defense, the air conditioning was on and how could a dog be expected to hear a thief with the heat pump running right outside the bedroom window.)
5. Wake up in a good mood, stretch big, and go outside to sniff your perimeter.
6. Savor a good sunbeam.

Unresolved Resolutions

While I haven't consciously formulated a list of resolutions for 2013, I think a part of my brain has been preoccupied with plans and lists. This has been going on for the better part of the month, but I think the current trend toward mental lists is probably related to the winter cold snap as much as anything else. It's the same mechanism that makes me want to pore over seed catalogs and make garden plans that are far more ambitious than anything I will actually do.

Two Faces Have I

Two parts of me are duking it out to see which part gets majority control of the uber-Lisa. There's always a part that wants to hibernate in the winter darkness, to curl up in a ball under the covers and listen to improvised white noise like an old western serial podcast (current favorite is The Six Shooter starring Jimmy Stewart).

But a second more creative and lively part struggles to raise its head above the hibernation. It's that second part that finds the chilly wind invigorating when I walk between buildings at work. It's that second part that cannot help but consider new planting beds and different sowing strategies when the seed catalogs arrive in the mail. And it's that second part that makes to-do lists, even if they're just lists in the back of my mind and not written down on paper, and has genuine desire to follow through on the items on those lists to grow and improve.

Aging Gracefully?

I guess the shadowy unwritten lists that the one half of my brain is composing this January while the other half dozes and listens to Jimmy Stewart's whispered narrative are resolutions for the new year (at least as close as I plan to get to calling them resolutions). The very general term of "fitness" occupies the number one spot on the list. I want to feel good about my body and in my body. I want to be able to do the outdoor activities I enjoy without becoming so winded or tired and sore that I just say, "Oh, to hell with it... ."

And to be honest, I think I'm running from time.

In my mind, I'm still the same person I was when I was 27. Well, maybe not exactly the same person. A lot can be said for the lessons we learn between 27 and... um... well... older than 27 (thank God). But more or less the same person... physically and energetically similar.

And then I see myself in the mirror. Or take another look at the DMV photo on my driver's license. (Really, DMV? You got to play that way? Would it kill you to get some soft lighting, inspire some happy thoughts so it wouldn't look quite so much like I'd just taken a break from the prison laundry to snap updated mugs for the inmate registry?)

And then I spend a Saturday doing yard work followed by a Saturday evening lying prone on the couch watching British comedies on PBS and thinking "I'd like to pop some microwave popcorn but that would entail standing and walking into the kitchen and I'm pretty sure parts will just break off me if I stand up because I'm that sore from the yard work."

I don't want that part of growing older. Do I have to have it? Is it inevitable? Egads!

Taking My Own Advice

This is the point at which I circle back around to things I wrote a couple of months ago and say they're still valid. It does help to break a goal down into smaller parts. And I can help myself even more by making specific contingency plans to lessen the chance that circumstances outside my control will throw me completely off track. But I'm adding a few additional elements to the list - accountability, community, and competition.

Accountability, Community, and Competition

I've joined a weight loss competition at work. I've lost 0.6 pounds in the first week of the competition, but that's not really the major point. On the surface the competition is about pounds and prizes, but I want more than weight loss. I want to improve my cardiovascular function. I want to improve core strength, flexibility, and balance. I want to tone and tighten to lose inches and gain muscle definition. I want to feel better, and feel better about myself.

I'm looking for ways to hold myself accountable. For example, I'm being open at the office about the challenge - no shadow dieting for me - and commiserating with others about the temptations of cookies at training sessions and left-overs in the break room. That's a good start, but I can do more. In fact, I've already done more.

Tomorrow - more about accountability, community, and competition.

My PEDFRON report card

This is a report card I'd hide from Mom

The post-every-day-for-the-rest-of-November (I've decided to call it PEDFRON) project wasn't a complete failure, but it also wasn't a rousing success. I'm able to see the glass as half full...and half empty. It's a blessing...and a curse.

Setting the goal did have the desired effect of making me post more often for awhile. There's the half full.

If I were actually graded on my performance, however, I'd get an F. That's "failing" for those of you on the traditional letter-grade scale. It's also "failing" for those of you on the Pass-Fail-Honors touchy-feely scale.

It's not a glass half empty; it's a glass full of diddly-squat. A glass full dusty. Nada glass.

Why didn't I get an A?

When I set the goal, I didn't define parameters for gradations of success. I worded the goal such that I either did it all the way (success), or I didn't do it all the way (failure). I know myself well enough to know that's no way to set myself up for success.

I've also been in management long enough to have been indoctrinated into the cult of the SMART goal.

SMART is a mnemonic device to help us remember the process for setting effective goals. You'll see it spelled out in many different ways, but the mnemonic key I've been taught is:

S = Specific
M = Measurable
A = Achievable
R = Realistic
T = Timely

I'm not going through the whole process here. There's a ton of information out there. Just search on "setting SMART goals" and your goal setting cup will runneth over.

I should have followed my own advice

More important (to me at least) is the fact that I didn't make much of an attempt to use implementation intentions or capitalize on the other information in my own post on cementing healthy habits.

I downloaded the Blogger app for iPhone as a specific action to prevent travel from derailing my goal. That's the extent of my implementation intentions. Downloading the app gave me a tool to successfully address a narrowly defined problem, but it didn't give me motivation. Motivation is key.

Next steps?

It's clear to me I've got to find the motivation to turn a glass full dusty into... well, into a full glass.

Us against Them

You are part of an us. In fact, everyone is part of some us. Even if you consider yourself a solitary being in the world, you are part of an us. In that case, you're your own us - a small us, but an us nonetheless.

Every us has an associated them. By definition, them is not us. There is no better descriptor for them than not us. It says all we need it to say.

We live our lives in the tension between us and them.

At some point in your life you will draw the distinction between us and them. It may be a conscious decision or it may be surprisingly subconscious.

You will probably have a surge of strong emotion when you draw the distinction between us and them.  You may have a surge of warm happiness and cool relief that you're us and not them. I think it's more likely that you'll feel a little shame and anger, maybe regret,  that you can't be them or they won't be us (or at least try to be a little more like us.)

It doesn't have to be us against them.

Human language provides two general approaches for describing our wants, our needs, our selves. We can speak in the negative to describe what separates us from them - what we don't want, can't have, won't do. Or we can speak in the positive to describe what we like, crave, wonder, might attempt to do.

It doesn't have to be us against them. It can be us beside them, perhaps different in what we do or how we do it but living day after day in the same world.

We're neighbors, us and them.