abundance

Meta-Optimism . . . Meta-Living

/ Kennedy Farr / 5 Comments

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Meta.

meta . . . referring to itself or to the conventions of its genre; self-referential [Google’s “define: meta”] 

Metacognition is thinking about thinking.  Metadata is data about data.  Meta-joke is joking about jokes.  Meta-discussion is discussion about discussion. And then there is meta-emotion: emotion about emotion. Whew.

This past week, I was listening to a friend who was needing to take care of some personal business that involved a massive amount of emotional energy.  It set me to remembering some of my rather spectacular meta-emotional experiences from the past. She shared what she was feeling and what was compelling her to move forward in her life in this particular relationship.  As we talked, I sensed a thickening layer of doubt and dread and uncertainty blanketing her true emotions.

It was as if there were a miasma of other emotions fogging in and layering on top of her Truth.  Feelings of fear and awkwardness and regret and  . . ..  I had to stop her and ask: What are you really truly feeling?  What is the bottom-line feeling that is motivating you to act?  What is it that you truly want?

It made me think of what I call some of life’s Liver Moments.  I once read that the liver is composed of sheets of tissue that are extraordinarily connective.  That it is a mass of layers that is seemingly impossible to sew up and repair.  Insert suture.  Oops.  That might not have been such a good idea.  Try again in a new spot.  Nope, not there.  Oops, the needle just messed that area up.  Yikes.  Now there is a bigger mess to repair.

You get the idea.  Whether this is true in the anatomical and surgical sense in the life of a human liver, I don’t know.  I have not researched the anatomy adequately . . . I read of this in reference to damaged connections and irreparable relationships, so I suspect it is possible that the author was stretching his or her simile a bit. Trying to fix things sometimes makes a muck of things.  We sometimes believe in the possibility of healing when trying to re-connect.  To repair and to heal.

But still.  There is always the possibility that certain situations are not destined to be patched up like new.  In some relationships, some things are pretty tough to doctor up.  Things are done or not done.  Words are spoken or not spoken.  I love yous are rat-holed in some cubby of the heart.  Patience is discarded.  Kindness is ignored.  Offense is taken.  Affection is withheld.  Green-eyed envy establishes residence.  Fear dominates.  Once that suture goes in, over and over again in an attempt to gain some purchase, maybe it is time to take a step back.  Allow the whole thing to breathe for a bit.  Let the liver have some healing time.  Move in a new direction.  Stop, drop, and roll.

stacks of quilts. 12db09c68d1cd87d57637c79d56379f6There have certainly been times when I have really complicated things by embracing and nurturing some serious meta-emotion.  Emoting about emotions.  Feelings to the exponential square.  I have blanketed emotion upon emotion to the point of suffocating my true feelings.  I was no longer capable of recognizing the core emotion that I was trying to cover up with rational thought.  When finding myself in an emotional sticky wicket, it seems that I always want to know the outcomes well in advance .

Today.  Am I any wiser in the ways of meta-emotion?  I don’t know.  Occasions occur, and I sometimes allow an emotional hijacking to occur.  I go to that place — that blind — that camouflages reality.  I indulge myself by making something bigger than it is.  Still.  There are also those times when I take care of my true emotions and allow them to speak to me in a voice that is much louder than a whisper.  I choose real-time life over what could have been . . . what could be.  

This is powerful.  I can be such a hard-driven optimist at times, I completely ignore all of the true and real signs that are directing or mis-directing me in life.  High performance optimism has rewarded me so well.  But it has also steered me wrong.  I sometimes must caution myself to not always see how things can be.  My life lesson: Be aware of meta-optimism: optimistic about optimism.

The ultimate meta life lesson for me? Aim for Meta-Living: living about living.  Life as a self-referential entity and referring to the conventions of its genre.  Not fighting the Now.  Being in the moment.  Embracing Now.  Setting aside the suture and letting the liver heal and move on without relying on blind and extraordinary optimism as an intervention.  Removing the blankets of emotions that suffocate my soul’s origin.  Allowing my happiness to breathe.

My present moment?  I embrace and subscribe to the state of meta-happy: happy about happiness.  So much more fun!  And so much more real when I allow my emotions, my thoughts, my dreams, my goals, my life’s work to guide me into the conventions of my own happy creativity.  For this and for the people in my life who make my life so much bigger and more wonderful, I feel an abundance of appreciation and gratitude.

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I see you. I am here.

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment

I heard someone say the other day that she is a lifelong learner.  I like this sentiment.  We are all lifelong learners.  I seek growth and feel fully present when I am in the process of learning and evolving.  My life experiences have been shaped by years of primitive living, sharing with my family, teaching, studying, researching, gardening, dancing, playing music, reading, painting, creating, seeking ways to express love . . . time draws together in a harmonious confluence – constantly moving and flowing in directions that connect me as a part of the greater whole.

I believe that we all want to be part of a bigger whole.  We seek empathetic connections that acknowledge each other, define our lives in powerful ways, and allow for us to be examples and inspirations of growth, kindness, and healing — to truly see each other.

Among the tribes of northern Natal in South Africa, the most common greeting, equivalent to “hello” in English, is the expression: sawu bona. It literally means, “I see you.” If you are a member of the tribe, you might reply by saying sikhona, “I am here.” The order of the exchange is important: until you see me, I do not exist.

What this acknowledgement means is simply empathy. It means that you acknowledge the other as one like yourself. It means that the ‘I’ and the ‘You’ are the same – parts of a bigger whole.”  [I dearly wish I could remember the source from which I read this translation.  My apologies to the author.]

i-am-here_webI believe that every little bit works together into one whole, one flow.  And it is sometimes simpler to banish the roots of uncertainty and doubt in others than it is in our own selves.   It requires courage for us to explore new pathways.  In life’s journey, I want to experience and communicate both sawu bona (I see you) and sikhona (I am here).

I came across a passage in my reading recently that resonated with me: our blessings and gifts earn value when used . . . our abundance is an expression of how we use our gifts and how we can feel truly prosperous.  When we share, our riches grow in value because we have given them with compassionate awareness.  Wow.  This is just so beautiful.

I so believe this to be true.  We can create abundance in our lives and the lives of others by giving freely of what we have and who we are.  It is a humbling thing to think on and to write of.  It is an enormous privilege to become part of another’s journey and to think that I stand to be instrumental in another’s growth or happiness.  Wow.  Sawu bona.  Sikhona.  toaster oven

The byline for the day: Just Believe.

/ Kennedy Farr / 6 Comments

The image from this morning left me momentarily breathless.  It slowed me to a halt.  I witnessed an act of beauty – the anatomy of a miracle.

First, the sinking dismay that accompanies preventable, regrettable loss.  And second, the joyful bounce of unexpected prayerful return.  Kill the fatted calf – my long-lost has returned to me.

All of this amazingness – while driving downtown to my favorite coffee shop for my morning joe.  Generally, I prefer to pay homage to the four fundamentals of coffee brewing – freshness, grind, water, proportion – in my own kitchen.  But the clock had been hounding me from the moment my eyes caught their first peep of fresh morning light.  The alarms had done their jobs of multiple snooze . . . still, I had overslept.  I dashed through my morning routine: showering, picking out which pair of shoes would dictate the dress for the day, untangling some knots in my hair born from a fitful dream, walking the dog, feeding the cat, finding my keys.

Rush, rush, rush.  I met with every red light through the downtown district on my way to connect with some caffeine.  All of those courteous drivers who were yielding to pedestrians not at crosswalks or allowing other drivers to get into the lane ahead of them.  I was all but gnashing my teeth while murmuring my own dialect of cussing: toothpicks, trashbucket, rubybum, jesusmaryandjoseph.

I was at my 8th light when I saw a real-world diorama on the northwest corner of Holly and State.  There were three people waiting to cross at the light: a woman, a young-ish boy approximately nine years old, and a little redheaded girl dressed in pale pink tights, yellow dress, and black shiny shoes.  She was at that enviable age where tears can dry instantly and miracles still have the power to go unnoticed.

Life is all flow at that age.  I do remember.  So much stuff – the wheat and the chaff – pours into one vessel when you are three years old.  Entire lifetimes can occur in a single day – a single action – a single moment.  When you are three-years-old, life is in spontaneous mode.  Your awareness of control is underdeveloped.  You don’t exactly wonder how things are going to get sorted out.  They either do.  Or they don’t.  You might hope for the former, but there is the possibility of the latter inspiring some tears.

Movement caught my eye as I waited for the green.  The little ginger was pointing across the street.  Her hands pressed to her cheeks.  Her mouth a perfect O.  There, on the other side of the street was a bright pink hat.  The kind of hat you wear to church on Easter Sunday.  The woman was holding the hand of the little girl while pulling back on the hood of the boy’s green sweatshirt.  A veritable push-me-pull-you in action.

It did not require an advanced course in reading lips or body language to be able to hear their conversation . . . a study in exclamation marks.  The woman: An emphatic Stop!  You, come closer!  Wait!  You, be careful!  From the boy: Let me go! From the little girl:  Hurry!

The light changed to WALK, the woman released her grip on the boy’s hoodie, and the boy made his dash to the other side of the street.  Scooped up the ruby pink hat.  Loped back.  Plopped the hat on his little sister’s head all catawampus.  The little girl looking up at her brother: My hero!  Her hands adjusting her hat tighter to her head.  It was going to be a good day after all.

While watching, I couldn’t help but hope that the light wouldn’t change so I could see the rescue.  Vicariously experience the resolve.  The driver behind me laid on his horn.  His scowl and middle finger in my rearview told me that I hadn’t been paying attention to the light, the traffic, or my hurry.  I had been transfixed by the story.  Me: the one in the big rush, the one who had been cussing at courteous drivers, the one who had been tailgating law-abiding drivers.  Me: holding up traffic while watching something random and amazing.

The colors: the blue sky; the red hair and pink hat and new pale-pink tights; the baggy green hoodie and crayon-purple stocking hat.  The rescue: the heroes in this life.  The miracle: the joyful reunion.  The lesson: life does provide the chariot to our wishes.  The reminder: Hold loosely but hope for the best.  The hope for the return of some things in life is worth wishing for.  The magic: Just believe.  Life is good.  One never knows when a miracle is about to happen.  They happen every single day.  For this, I feel an immense and abiding abundance of gratitude. toaster oven

miracles can happen

Skipping in Place

/ Kennedy Farr / 2 Comments

I was thinking last night about how stuck we feel when we realize we are in a negative place.  Stuck like a needle in a skip on vinyl.  

We feel that there is no hope for forward movement, and we can hear the inevitability that it is we who are going to have to make the skip stop. Sometimes we hope that the scratch is sufficiently insignificant such that we can wait out the monotony . . . when all we need do is pick up the needle and move it to the next track.  I sometimes “kick myself” after realizing that I have invested time into something that is, in all actuality, cancelling out forward movement and quality of  life.  But maybe this is part of life’s learning, and I should be easier on myself.  

Regret is an emotion wasted.  It is the groove that is holding the skip in place.  By being present and freeing ourselves from being stuck, we are renewed with the energy that fuels our happiness in the present and our dreams for the future.  By taking action and removing that needle, we allow self-forgiveness for those What was I thinking? moments.  Time to move on.  Time to put on a new album and move to a new rhythm.unstuck-2

Life is brimming with gifts and treasures and happiness.  The discovery of this abundance is the best part of life for me, like opening a box that is filled with exactly my heart’s desire.  Perhaps bumping up against those not-so-positve places is not the villain after all . . . knowing that I have the strength and the courage to get up from my spot of stagnant acceptance, pick up the needle, place it on its holder, remove the album, pick a new album, reset the needle.  And enjoy.  Sigh.  It wasn’t that hard, truly.  Time to move on to a better-feeling place and dance to some new music.

Who knew that being brave could be so liberating?  Certainly not a unique concept for those who regularly beard the lion in the den before breakfast . . . but definitely something to consider when feeling stuck in a groove that shows no promise of movement.  Move the needle or change the vinyl.  Take a chance.  You never know what wonderful thing might happen.

Keep Calm and Love Monday

/ Kennedy Farr / 4 Comments

keep-calm-and-love-mondayIt’s Monday.  I love Mondays.  The new week of hope and promise and abundance is about to begin.  We groove through a weekend filled with preferences and sleeping in and  music and family and chores and reading the newspaper and maybe even some dancing.  Then we land on Monday’s doorstep.  Today, as you enter into your Monday, smile often, look up and around, and realize how fantastic life is.  It is today and you are in it.  Pet the dog’s head before you head out the door.  Thank your barista for that mocha.  Tell her she is awesome for jump starting your morning everyday.  Let someone into traffic ahead of you.  Do something crazy fun. Dance for the security cameras.  Surprise your boss with a smile.   Take a walk on your break and look at the state of the clouds.  Call your sister and tell her you love her.  Send someone a surprise email.  Share some dessert with someone.  Write a letter, a real letter.  Play hopscotch at the bus stop.  And . . . always believe that something wonderful is about to happen.  Because it is.  Your next breath, your next laugh, your next hug, your next decision. grow-786x305 Grow your Monday, intend some abundance, and harvest the beauty.

It is all one beautiful moment that is alive with promise: fresh and new and growing.