The Wall of Jealousy

Not Everything Green Grows in the Garden

Blue-green waves lapped the shore.

The sun sparkled, tossing diamonds of light across the sand.

I breathed in the air and welcomed the beauty.

Jealousy then stabbed my consciousness, and I thought:

“I sure hope [name] appreciates waking up to this every day.”

In that moment, I realized that in being jealous of what I didn’t have,

I wasted precious moments not being aware of what was

right in front of me, around me, blessing me.

Jealousy--dark, dank, green, parasitic
It leaches joy, companionship, love, and empathy from life.

Jealousy—green like foul algae growing where it’s dark and damp, allowing in only enough sunshine to let it fester, spread, and grow.

Festering, growing, and spreading isn’t all it does. It builds a wall, bricks one in with envy, lust, greed, and an unspoken demand that one have, possess, be, own, look like, act like, have the same talents as those on whom one sets the barb of covetous thoughts, words, deeds.

Unlike inspiration, which propels one toward a higher, nobler, more compassionate, empathetic life, jealousy builds walls in misguided attempts at protection. The walls grow ever-higher, blocking one’s vision, and trapping a hardened heart in the dried and clinging muck that turns to concrete, further separating and walling oneself in.

Jealousy's scourge is something I’ve battled for decades, feeling the dark desires and opening myself to the bitterness of comparison—to demanding that life treat me differently than it has.

Social media in the last week opened my eyes to how I’ve closed my heart when jealousy strikes. I hid—yes hid—status updates from those who had more, did more, experienced more, who are more attractive than I. The last time I did that, I watched someone’s experience fade away. For a short moment, it was less painful. I couldn’t want what I didn’t see.

Soon after, however, I was reminded of what else I could no longer see—people smiling, hugging, laughing, celebrating. By focusing on what I thought I didn’t have, I lost something of value—the opportunity to share joy, to feel that joy, to experience a vicarious moment of happiness and let that joy infuse itself into my being as well.

Instead, I was left with my wall, insulating me, separating me—leaving me in the muck that continued to rise about my feet. I loosened my feet from their shoes of clay and began climbing the wall, until perched at the top, I was able to see out—to see beyond the petty demand that life, love, possessions, experiences, meet some nebulous nirvana that in my conscious awareness, I wasn’t even certain I wanted.

What do I want? I want to—intend to—change the song playing in my psyche that dares to compare—me against you, me against her, me against him, me against them. It’s a bad song, poorly composed and worse performed.

It’s not easy to look my own self in the eye and recognize the negativity I carry around like so many bricks in a bag. It’s even harder to say I’ll continue to look myself in the eye when I feel that wall being reconstructed, because I know the war against the green wall is ongoing. That wall is not even completely dismantled as I write. I do know what to do to keep this construction at a moratorium:

Celebrate the joys of others and hold them close as if they are my own.

Express gratitude because I have much, cherish much, love much, and am loved much in return.

Share what I have with open heart, open arms, and a compassionate, empathetic heart. It’s the only way to keep the green wall from going higher, blocking sun, warmth, light, and love.

Arms... and the Right to Bare Them

Bare-ing Arms

Crepe Paper? Where’s the Party?

On My Upper Arms . . .

Crepe paper is for parties, so why is a party happening on my arms? I shouldn’t have been surprised when I looked in the mirror recently and spied some dreaded crepe paper skin. Well, I wasn’t surprised. I was dismayed. Isn’t it enough that my near-sixty body has protruding veins, horrid age spots, and so many broken capillaries on my thighs that they look like Manhattan street maps? The list could go on, and it does: glasses that get more powerful with each visit to the optician, hot flashes, moodiness, and forgetfulness. To top it off, I also have what I call "Michael Jackson disease"—vitiligo—so white spots dot the parts of my body that don’t have brown (horrid) age spots.

I suppose I should be grateful my upper arms don’t flap in the breeze. And, I am. Years of yoga and before that, years of schlepping babies and toddlers mean that despite what my nay-saying bench-pressing son believes, my arms do have the teeniest bit of definition.

However, the crepe-paper look is not one I want to cultivate in the climate in which I live. Florida starts getting toasty in April, morphs into hot in May, and then stays at so-hot-I-can’t-stand-it from June through mid-September.

Floridians keep cool by wearing as little clothing as basic decency permits. Maybe not all Floridians adhere to that standard, but I do. Being self-employed means I can skip office casual and go straight to summer-work-inside-my-home casual: flip-flops, shorts, and tank tops.

Tank tops do not cover arms. Baring my arms that recent morning, the light shone just right—and I saw crepe-paper lines, scrunched-up skin. My first impulse was to grab a long-sleeved shirt and to hide my arms, like I hide other less-attractive features, but it’s July. Crepe-paper skin isn’t something I want to advertise, but there it was, and I will not wear long sleeves in July, August, and September, and maybe not even in October. The tank tops stay on and I’ll just have to bare arms.

What to do? Crepe paper is for parties, so why not throw a party for my arms? What will my arms and I celebrate? We’ll celebrate the following:

1. ·      Sixty years of balancing me and directing my hands
2. ·      Carrying five babies, toddlers, and small children
3. ·      Hugging. My arms have given, and received, thousands of hugs.
4. ·      Cooking. My arms have made thousands of meals; my hands helped, of      course, but would be useless without my arms.
5. ·      Planting flowers, food, and herbs
6. ·      Dispensing medicine as well as treats
7. ·      Carrying thousands of bags of groceries
8. ·      Waving to loved ones: hello and sometimes goodbye
9. ·      Years of yoga, mountain pose, warrior, child pose
10. ·      Driving—thousands of miles
11. ·      Carrying towels, sunscreen, and drinks onto the beach
12. ·      Reaching
13. ·      Holding a loved one, even past the toddler stage
14. ·      Leaning, falling, and helping me to stand again

If every eye wrinkle comes from a crinkled smile, then I suppose I can celebrate my arm wrinkles in all their crepe-paper party finery. I can celebrate where those wrinkles came from and look forward to celebrating and welcoming more of them. Bare these arms? You bet! They deserve it!

Ashes, Ashes: They All Fall Down

Ashes Wednesday, July 4th

Wildfires, Vulnerability, and Gratitude

Fire! Four fires sprung up west and south of my house on Tuesday and Wednesday. I saw them burning hot in the distance, red flaring through the clouds of smoke that darkened the late-afternoon skies. Rainy season brought an abundance of the wet stuff a few weeks ago. Since then, the skies, although resounding with startling thunder the last several afternoons, have yet to loosen rainy season’s balm of cool moisture into the earth in my part of Florida.

Late yesterday afternoon, we saw three fires in the distance. Five miles or so due west, one brought smoke into my yard. More disturbing was the ash falling snow-like from the sky. But as soon as the once-gray flakes landed, they announced their lack of moisture and dusted the driveway with soot. We watched the flakes tumble to the ground, and after studying them, noted they were only ash, blown the intervening miles by an east-moving wind. None were hot.

Even so, I didn’t feel safe. In fact, I felt vulnerable, being aware of the fire devastation in Colorado the last month.

I imagined puny efforts on my part if the ash had been hot. What could I do? Would I stand in my yard wetting everything down with a garden hose? In the face of a threatening fire, I knew I would feel helpless, as so many have in the past and likely will in the future.

I cannot compare anything I felt watching that ash fall down with anything felt by people whose lives have been consumed by fire or flood, hurricane or tornado. I’ve been spared Nature’s wrath for the most part, although my life has been touched by other disasters and fraught with other challenges.

I watched the three fires burn. I touched the ash. The ash turned to soot. I again noted the distance, that my loved ones and I were, indeed, safe and secure, at least on that day, at that time. I felt the simple emotion of gratitude.

***

Early this morning, smoke and low visibility from one still-smoldering fire caused the Florida Highway Patrol to close I-95 from Route 60 in Vero Beach to Route 512 in Sebastian/Fellsmere. During my daily walk, a bright-red helicopter—looking much like a dragonfly in the distance—circled the fire area south of me. Although small and somewhat contained, the fire continues to burn, but the highway is open, and I hope this afternoon’s clouds will not be from smoke, but for rain.

The Journey Versus the Destination

How Far We Must Go

Versus Where We’ve Been

No black dogs of depression, these guys.
They help me in the good fight against it.

Rosie, Deek, and I walk every day. They are dogs. I walk them because they’re fat and need the exercise. I walk myself because I have a tiny problem with depression (maybe not so tiny), and exercise gets the serotonin moving in my brain and keeps it there. At first, I dreaded the walks, the dogs were rambunctious and I constantly had to keep them on a tight leash, literally. Two months after daily walks, they behave, and I, too, am behaving.

Increasing the distance each day, we’re now up to 1.6 miles. We walk to the end of the paved road and back home. Today, as I reached the end of the pavement, turned around, and looked in the distance, it seemed so far to my street, which I couldn’t even see. I got tired thinking how far I had to go, so I decided to just step along—one foot after another. I wanted to look back when I reached our street and see how far I’d been.

Reaching our street, in moments I was home, and realized I forgot to look back. Isn’t that just like life? I get so caught up in where I’m going, reaching my destination, that I forget just where I’ve been. In walking, depression, and life, I have a long way to go, but I’ve also come a long way, and it’s important to note the journey as well as the destination.

Beyond My Control . . .

Acts of Valor Mean the SEALs, Marines, Soldiers, Sailors Are in Control

SEALS demonstrate maneuvers at the SEAL
Veteran's Day Muster at the Navy SEAL Museum in Ft. Pierce, Florida

Act of Valor is a movie I didn’t want to watch, like Blackhawk Down, Battle Los Angeles, and others I’ve pushed from my memory banks. A Room with a View, Pride and Prejudice, and the like are my choices for entertainment. Act of Valor and its kin put me in a state of fear—fear of things over which I have little control.

Act of Valor is a movie about SEALs. Navy SEALs. It’s about acts of valor. SEALs have been more in the news the past few years after Marcus Luttrell’s book, Lone Survivor, was published. The news also brought us the daring (is that redundant in reference to SEALs?) rescue of MV Maersk Alabama Captain Richard Phillips, whom Somali pirates had taken hostage. Osama bin Laden’s rightful end at the hands of SEALs is their most-published endeavor.

Why watch, then? I watch because my son, the aspiring Marine, wants to share what he loves with me. Those things over which I have no control—villains like bin Laden, Somali pirates, warlords in Somalia and Afghanistan—such incidents are far removed from the fiction of Fitzwilliam Darcy and the lovely Elizabeth Bennett professing their love (finally!) in a heather-abundant meadow. The bombing of the USS Cole and the stoning and poisoning of women and female children who want to read and walk free from their burka-cages also are beyond my control—and a far cry from the orchid- and flower-filled gardens that get my attention.

Beyond my control, yes, but not beyond control. That’s where the SEALs, the Marines, the Navy, the Army, its Rangers and Green Berets, and the Air Force come in. All those things beyond my control are the daily business of the United States military.

Once a peace-loving pacifist (and even still in some respects), I have been educated by terrorists to realize our military is necessary.

Acts of valor never seen on the big screen or the published page (Web and paper alike) take place far more often than I—or probably most Americans—want to know.

I want to feel secure on our soil; and my aspiring Marine wants to serve that security to me and the rest of our nation. I try to understand what he wants to do, and often it scares me, so it’s easier to pick up a Victorian novel or watch a tepid drama on the screen rather than sit, eyes covered half the time, and watch movies like Act of Valor.

Watch, I do, though, when he asks me to, and I push aside my fear. And I get an education about real things going on in the world—real threats to freedom. I never want to nurse a female child back to health who was poisoned because she wanted to learn to read. I never want to have to stumble through life burka-clad head to toe. I never again want to see planes fly into towers. Because I don’t want those things for me or for anyone, regardless of which continent or country they call home, I watch those movies and replace my fear with gratitude that my son and thousands of others are prepared to participate in acts of valor—for me, and for you, too.

Grammar Woman Walking

Grammar Woman Walks in the Rain

Rain fell on me, never on I.

“A gentle, refreshing rain fell on the dogs and I . . .” No, that’s wrong. It’s not “the rain fell on . . . I, it’s the rain fell on . . . me.” Try again, Grammar Woman, I said to myself. “A gentle, refreshing rain fell on the dogs and me as we took our early morning walk.”

Summer heat and humidity mean earlier and earlier walks, but even at 7:45, it was getting steamy. When the rain started falling, my first instinct was to bolt. But to where? I was at least a half-mile from home and had a 50+-pound dog on a leash at the end of each wrist. There would be no bolting, unless one of them spied a rabbit.

It seems almost hokey zen to write these words, but they’re true: I decided to simply embrace the rain and continue our walk, rather than sprint the rest of the way.

Cool raindrops dotted my shoulders and arms as we continued toward home.

Why are we humans so reluctant to walk in the rain? Why do we feel the need to dash to the nearest shelter? I considered just walking, walking in the rain.

It was then that today’s story began forming: “A gentle, refreshing rain . . .” It was then that I changed into Grammar Woman Walking as I corrected pronouns with the red pen in my brain. The rain falling on “I” became the rain falling on “me,” and the words I now write formed before I arrived home to put them on the page.

Grammar Woman writing, after walking.

As I sit on the porch, coffee at my elbow, I look outside my covered space and see that once again, a cooling rain is falling, but not on me, and certainly not on “I.”

Seeds of Joy--Finding Beauty in the Buds and Blooms

Seeking Beauty—A Conscious Choice

Seeds of Joy—Sunflowers Reflect the

Face of Beauty on Earth

Sprouts. Sunflowers germinating. What can be more beautiful than the possibility contained in a single seed?

The Burpee seed package noted: Packed for 2006. Sell by 8/06. Origin Germany. Aged six years, I doubted the seeds would do anything, but I didn’t properly dry the seed heads from my recent sunflower blooms, so they molded and festered. The outdated package and another (more-outdated) were all the sunflower seeds I have. Yet, I wanted a continuous bloom of sunflowers in the garden this summer. I also didn’t want to purchase more seeds because I have admitted to having a problem with buying seeds. Far too many visions of gardens dancing in my head have pushed me to the checkout line, little envelopes of promise in my hands. Then, I suffer the guilt when I must compost those dead, dried vessels once they’d passed the point of germinating—ever.

Admitting the problem was a beginning toward doing something about it. Sowing the sunflower seeds I have (aged, outdated though they may be) was a step in doing something about that little problem.

Sow, indeed, it was with some trepidation that I poked those aged pods into seed-starter mix and waited.

Germination still fascinates me...

This group is ready to go into the garden.

A few days later, a pair of them poked tiny leaves above the soil surface. Ah . . . the miracle of growth. It surprises me with joy every time. I feel like a gestating mom as I watch the seeds progress until its time to plant them. Like a mother hen, I cluck, cluck, cluck over them, watering and fertilizing until they present me with the ultimate gift—blooms!

Mr. Bee ensures we will have future blooms.

Seeing and experiencing the emerging seed to sprout to flower is one of the great beauties and joys of our Earth.

Thursday, June 7, 2012: I am focusing on seeking beauty each day and at the day’s end, deciding what experience, thought, or view awakened beauty most in my psyche. I hope this focus on beauty will enrich me and awaken the idea of beauty in others.