Outing Myself For A Moment In Someone Else's Heart

At my bridge group on Monday one of my friends said, “You outed yourself in your last blog.”

“I did,” I agreed. She was right. I wrote honestly about my own vulnerability, my own post-bridge-game-self-created-drama and what I did with it.

One of the things I learned while writing for the Fairfield Citizen News all those years was that as a first person columnist, I needed to be transparent—a word so frequently used in politics it makes me squirm to write it.

What does that mean? To me, as a writer of essays about life, it means telling the truth about myself. Not pretending to know it all and certainly not maintaining a safe, intellectual distance from my own experience as I write about it. Who wants that?

My hope is that I can write about what happens in my life and the lives of others around me with enough clarity and personal investment that readers might, just might, be able to see something of themselves in the story I am telling. Not every reader, every time. That would be too much to expect. But some readers most of the time? That would be great!

As a child, in church, this sentence,“Be ye therefore perfect even as your father in heaven is perfect,” (Matt: 5: 48), used to fill me with despair. Who could be perfect? I wondered. Perfect like Jesus? I could never attain that perfection. I wasn’t even sure what that meant, but I was sure that perfection was totally beyond my reach. I surmised that I was expected to try to be perfect, while all the time knowing it was out of the question.

And then, when I was forty-five and a student at New York Theological Seminary, my bible study teacher challenged that sentence from the Gospel of Matthew. She told us that the Greek word from which the word “perfect” was translated, actually meant “complete.” Be ye therefore complete? That means, the teacher explained, getting to know yourself, becoming aware: accepting yourself, warts and all. Becoming transparent to yourself and to God.

What liberation! Complete was something I could work toward.

No longer strung up on the perfection cross, I was free to discover who I was, the deepest and sometimes scariest or weirdest parts of myself and bring them, as Carl Jung would encourage, out of the darkness into the light of conscious recognition. It is only through self awareness, Jung argues--and I share his view--that good choices are possible.

I choose to be transparent, “outing” myself whenever it helps me to share a story that might, just might, find a momentary home in someone else’s heart.

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Right now a few people in these countries are reading this blog. I am so grateful to those in: England, Romania, France, Canada, Portugal, Belarus, Netherlands, and Ukraine and, of course, the USA. Thank you all!

A Bit Of Trouble Practicing What I Preach

Those of you who read last week's blog know that I wrote about the life-enhancing importance of being able to play. Playing like a child, free from worry or care and not getting our knickers in a twist over making a mistake or losing.

I mean if you want to play your game-- whatever it is-- for blood and thunder and maybe get your name on a sliver cup, do so. Go for it! But what the doctors and life study people are saying is that we need to have times of giddy, possibly even nonsensical, free play as well.

I wrote about my sandbox beginner’s bridge game where we don’t keep score and we cheer each other on and it’s all for fun. Remember?

Fine. And true. Except, that this week I played just one hand and,  near the end of playing that hand, I had completely forgotten that there was an important card still out—in the opponent’s hand—against me. With confidence I laid down my last three cards and announced, ”We have the rest of the tricks,” at which point my friendly opponent said, “I don’t think so” and produced the powerful winning card I had completely forgotten. We did not make our contract.

I was gobsmacked! How could I have forgotten that card? This is not something I usually do. What is the matter with me?

I think I handled the situation all right at the table, apologizing to my partner and laughing, albeit somewhat feebly. I didn’t fall on the floor or foam at the mouth, but on the way home, in the car, I tore myself to pieces.

What were you thinking? You forgot that trump card! Where were you?

Here’s the thing: At my age, forgetting anything of any significance we can instantly self-diagnose as "short term memory loss." Then that can easily be taken to a 5, which, in the imagination, can become "incipient dementia." Taken to a 10, we are looking at possible early Alzheimer’s? We seniors have trouble allowing ourselves just to forget the way we used to. Forgetting is freighted heavily now, and all the way home I was loading my forgetfulness and then desperately trying to unload it.

It’s nothing, Cecily. You just forgot the damn card. Get over it. You know this is supposed to be fun. You wrote about it being fun and you are doing this? Punishing yourself? Can you manage to practice what you preach and free yourself up here?

I began to focus on my breath. Breathing in and breathing out. Stopping at the STOP sign. Breathing in and breathing out. My mind carries on: “They thought you were a pretty good player. Now what will they think?” Oh, yes. The whole, merciless, ego-busting nine yards.

 Driving along Bronson Road, breathing in and breathing out. Some words from Anna Black’s lovely book, Living In The Moment, came to mind. She reminds us to congratulate ourselves whenever we notice our minds going berserk. “Noticing is a moment of wakefulness and clear seeing,” she tells us. Black reminds us to smile and come back to rest in our breath as often as we need to in order to calm the mind.

OK. All the way down the hill of Bronson Road, I am breathing and hoping to calm my crazy mind.

I congratulate myself for noticing my torturous, ego-driven mental excursion and I breathe consciously all the way home. By the time I have parked my car I am not “cured” but I am definitely calmer, my fears of disintegration, diminished. Sitting for a few moments in the car, I am humbled; I have to say, by an intense awareness of how challenging it can be to be a human person.

A game. Just a game I was playing. That’s all it was. 

Playing Into Successful Aging

In preparation for a group called Healing Into Aging that I will be leading at Southport Congregational Church this fall, I have been reading a book called Aging Well, by George E. Vaillant, MD.

This is work. Dr. Vaillant is a researcher, scientist and I am neither. I wouldn’t recognize a longitudinal study—something he built the book around—if I fell over it. There are times when I want to shout, “Oh shut up about the structure of this study and get on with the results!”

Nonetheless, perseverance has revealed that the book contains useful information about aging and some of it, I think, is quite helpful and brilliant. So I forgive him for leading me through what has felt, this summer, like a narrow trail of bramble bushes. Near the end of the book at last, I have achieved light-filled, open pastures.

What is attracting me right now are his words about successful aging and the “fun factor.” He talks about the post retirement significance of play and creativity, but his theories about play interests me most because I think I don’t do enough of it.

Making the distinction between play and creativity, Vaillant tells us that, “creativity puts into the world what was not there before,” whereas play “has no product.” Play is “less approval seeking, freer from convention and creates less performance anxiety. It produces joy and does not require a reward.”

Presumably writing this blog and a few other things that I do are creative, and that’s a positive for healthy aging, but he’s right. Do I check the reader stats when I post a new blog? You bet I do. Am I concerned when a blog I’ve written fails to strike a chord with readers? Yes. Would I love the writing as much if no one read it? Actually I have written 150 pages of a memoir which no one will ever read and enjoyed doing it—but posting a blog that no one ever reads? I don’t think that would make me happy at all.

Back to play. Vaillant is talking about games: bocce, bridge—if it’s not razorblade competitive—croquet, poker, tennis, golf, scrabble. And he’s not writing about forging new neuropathways with these games, although that can happen, he is talking about playing, like a child, for the sheer fun of it and making new friends along the way.

Young grandchildren are great for this. Candy Land, anyone? Go Fish? Games galore just for the fun of it.

Reading this section of the book about the importance of play helped me to understand even more fully why I am loving this beginner bridge group that I am in: the one that doesn’t keep score: the one that applauds spontaneously when anyone plays a hand really well, making a difficult contract. We are playing in the bridge sandbox together and when someone builds a competent castle we cheer.

Vaillant writes that playing in this way involves “learning how to maintain self respect while letting go of self importance.” Not taking ourselves too seriously is good for our health, he maintains, and is an essential part of successful aging.

We can ruin play by taking ourselves, and our performance too seriously. Whatever game we are playing can cease to be playful and become just another way to one-up someone, seek approval and give ourselves performance ratings.  To our detriment, we humans are adept at twisting our self-esteem around almost anything we engage in. We can take the play out of play really fast.

There’s no question about it. I need to take my life less seriously, play with it and in it more than I do, and in spite of the labor of getting through his book, I thank Dr. Vaillant for his helpful observations.

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Meanwhile, you are most welcome to join our discussion group on Healing Into Aging at Southport Congregational Church. Please call the church at: 203 255 1594.

Six Sessions of Mindfulness Meditation and Conversation

Dates: Wednesdays: Sept 9, 16, 23, (omitting Sept 30) and Oct. 7, 14, and 21.

Time: 4:15-5:30 in the Library. Do come!

Water, Water, Everywhere

I am just back from a wonderful holiday, which ended in an extraordinary two-day stay at the magical Inn at Cuckolds Light House, located in Booth Bay Harbor, Maine.

I have wanted to stay in a light house all of my life and so it wasn’t too much of a surprise that when I reached the top of the ramp and walked toward Cuckolds Lighthouse, suddenly there were tears in my eyes.

Approaching

Writing about this place is beyond my skill. You have to feel a lighthouse island, not read about it. You have to feel the isolation, the wind, the crashing waves, and the sheer openness of the space, the wet, rocky surround and the vastness of the sky above. Words are utterly lame. Like trying to describe a mystical experience, it just ain’t happening!

Arriving

What I can share with you is some of the history of this gorgeous place and how, through the determination of local Maine people, it survived the willingness of the United States Coast guard to abandon it.

 Quoting from the history on the website: “In May 2006, a small, committed band of local citizens, organized as the Cuckolds Fog Signal and Light Station Council, succeeded in its efforts to rescue the lighthouse as the deed to the property was presented to the Council. Since then, volunteer-led efforts have been the driving force to restore the historic light station that serves as the “front porch light” for the greater Booth Bay region.

View off the rocks

 Built in 1892 as a fog signal station with a keeper’s house attached, Cuckolds Lighthouse was constructed on the highest part of the small island. The light tower was added in 1907. Two families shared the living space, each man on a twelve-hour shift tending the light and cranking the foghorn at regular intervals when necessary. A hard life.

From the top of the lighthouse

Now, of course, both the light and foghorn are computerized.  The current inn keepers, Heather Graham and Mark Zinkiewicz,  are in charge of the general welfare of the building and the superb hospitality offered to the guests that arrive to inhabit the two guest suites.

 The 360degree view of gleaming blue water is mesmerizing. Layers of rocks, sparkling with veins of quartz and mica surround the lighthouse—more at low tide--and boating activity from sleek yachts to sturdy, rough-sided lobster boats can be seen making their way in the ocean beyond. The surge and splash of the North Atlantic is constant and soothing.

Ahhh!

All this and outstanding food, as well. From chocolate chip banana muffins and vegetable and ham omelets for breakfast to grilled steak, Cornish hen or salmon or haddock, for a beautifully presented dinner. Both Heather and Mark are great cooks. Make no mistake. We may have been in a lighthouse, but we were not roughing it! The two bedrooms and the lounge are elegant and fitted out to perfection. 

I wish I could say I was thinking great thoughts. I wasn't. I was just watching a swirling tide pool below.

The Inn has been open for two years. Again from the website: “This luxurious retreat is available to adventurous travelers who want to experience their own private island while staying in the lighthouse. Guests are transported to the Cuckolds by licensed Launch Captains in a restored Navy motor whaleboat. Resident Keepers welcome visitors to the island, provide tours of the fully preserved historic Light Tower, serve as concierges and hosts to overnight guests, help maintain and protect the island and Station, and ensure visitors’ delight.” http://innatcuckoldslighthouse.com/

All true. A totally memorable experience.