love and relationships

The New Normal


Family arrangements in the US have become more...

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There is no new normal because, honestly, the whole idea of normal is highly subjective even under the best of circumstances which makes our former normal a matter of opinion really. Just as an example, for my four year old daughter old normal was a terminally ill father whose unresponsive shell she visited weekly at first in a nursing home, then in a hospice and finally in a cemetery where she would hug the grave marker good-bye before leaving. Now her normal is Daddy Will and Daddy Rob and two big sisters, one of whom she has yet to meet. This is normal to her. Even when she compares herself to her peers at the preschool she attends (and she does), she doesn’t see herself as different. Her friends have fathers and she does too. Her friends have older siblings and she does too. Her friends have DVD players in their cars, and now thanks to Daddy Rob, so does she. Four year old’s have their priorities straight and are shockingly practical.

 

Society fights a losing battle to norm itself, set standards and define optimal situations. While they seem to work for the majority of people, it doesn’t seem to be how the majority of people actually live. As another example, about a month ago a state trooper came into the high school where I teach to deliver a presentation to the students on the dangers of meeting people on the Internet. I sat as far back in the auditorium as I could, and I listened to the kids around me as they dismissed most of what the officer had to say as largely misinformed scare tactics, and although I don’t personally discount the possibility of predators on the net, I had to agree with the students. There are predators everywhere in real and virtual life. It is wise to know what signs to look for and to be careful when getting to know someone, but normal for most of the teens and young adults I know is meeting people via the Internet. Friends that you have never seen or talked to is no more unusual to them than the old concept of pen pals. Cyber introductions are similar to “friend of a friend” connections. I met Rob on a message board. In fifty-five days we are going to be married. In times gone by men and women met and got to know their potential mates via correspondence with their first face to face meetings often being their weddings. And that was normal. Twenty-five years ago my friends and I were meeting and dating young men we met at bars and frat parties. And that was normal, but I don’t remember any lectures on stranger danger from state troopers back then.

 

Normal is in the eye of the beholder. As my darling husband-to-be would say, “It is what it is,” which is a topic for another day.

The Void


Simulated gravitational lensing (black hole go...

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Lay down all thought

Surrender to the void

It is shining

It is shining

-John Lennon, lyrics to Tomorrow Never Knows off the Revolver album

 

 

 

Widowed people often ask about filling the void left by their deceased spouses, or rather they talk about how it can’t be filled. Surprisingly, I don’t disagree with them. Voids can’t be filled. How can you fill something that isn’t empty?

 

Voids are black holes of the soul. They devour. Nothing escapes their gravitational pull. Everything that was joyous and worth getting up in the morning for has been sucked into this pitch-colored vortex, never to be experienced again. They act almost like vacuum, clearing away the memories left behind by our spouses like cracker crumbs. Remnants of a life that hide like a set of misplaced car keys when you need them, but turn up when unexpectedly and rock us to our core.

 

Voids are necessary for the same reason that basements or backs of closets exist. They hold the things that our lives can’t rid themselves of, for a variety of reasons, but can’t use anymore either. Psychic storage units that you venture into at your own emotional risk. Why would you throw opportunities for love and happiness into that?

 

The life you find yourself living in the aftermath hangs on the edge of this blackened crater. It would be easy to fall in, let the dark claim you, but most of us don’t. True, we wander the rim for a time, but eventually we walk away in search of unscathed earth to resettle ourselves upon.

 

It’s not about “filling” anything or in the case of “the void” paving over it. It is about relocation, finding new space or in some cases making new space. Some people don’t have the capacity. They surrender to the grief. Or worse, they seek replacements and dump new love on top of old pain. It always comes back to this however, acknowledging the former life and honoring the love that once was while moving forward and being open to the possibilities that life does present even to those who aren’t paying attention.

 

 

 

 

An Ideal World


Pearl S Buck house .

Image by JARM13 via Flickr

“Life without idealism is empty indeed. We just hope or starve to death.” – Pearl S. Buck 

 

A friend told me last week that I should stop trying to create an “ideal” world. This was in response to a note I sent him about his reply to one of my last posts on the YWBB. He was critical of my stance on the negativity that finds such an easy foothold on the board in part because of the grief but also because those of us who know better are too slow to correct the naysayers and voices of despair. I told him, no, because I am not going to stop trying to share my own experiences or hoping the world will become a better place. I am not going to let darkness prevail. To which his response was that I was going to do well in Canada.

 

Americans and their right-wing ideas about Canadians aside, this got me thinking about whether I am truly an idealist or not. I have certainly copped to the Pollyanna label but rose-colored glasses might not be true idealism.

 

The googled definition of an idealist reads like this:

 

“One of the seven attitudes. Its positive pole is coalescence; its negative pole is abstraction. Idealists view the world in terms of how it could be changed for the better.”

 

Rob thinks that I fit that definition but that I haven’t really had much of an opportunity to action simply because I haven’t had a solid foundation from which to work for a very long time now. I would agree that on my good days I generally am trying to rally the troops (interesting analogy – would an idealist use a military analogy?) to a common cause and that at my least focused I tend towards the unrealistic in terms of ideas and implementation. But to just give in to the general malaise and admit defeat in the face of odds small or overwhelming is not something I can do. I don’t deny my own dark moments when it seemed to me that I would never feel anything but misery again. It’s disingenuous to tell someone that tragedy won’t affect us and change who we are, but Anne Frank wasn’t wrong when she stated her belief that deep down people are good. And I am not wrong when I add that the world is a good place too.

 

I think that grief makes it too easy for us to quit. We say to ourselves that since life will never be the same then it will never be as good either. This allows us to not even try because if we try and fail then that is a reflection on us, but if we give ourselves permission to not try at all then we can hide in our widow weeds, safe from self-loathing and worldly expectations. There is a reason that society both close and far puts pressure on us to “get over” our spouse’s deaths and it is not just to ease their discomfort. It’s not good for us to bog down. Get stuck. There is nothing emotionally healthy in viewing life as having been spent and seeing the time ahead of us as something to merely be marked. In encouraging us to look to a brighter tomorrow and to lay aside our negative feelings and outlooks, we are being urged to embrace life. And is life perfect? No, and it wasn’t before, but it is and always has been a product of hope, imagination, and some effort.

 

From time to time I need to step back from the idea that I can make a difference on my own. Teaching is an example of that. After 20 years I have resigned from my current position and will not be teaching when the fall finds me in Canada. Teaching is a profession that demands a lot of “give” on the part of the instructor and very little “give back” from the students, but if you are doing it correctly you should burn out periodically and need to change venues by way of changing schools, grade levels or subject areas. If you are passionate about what you do, it should show. I am probably a little past my prime when it comes to letting my love of a job consume me. I have other more important things in my life, but I still think that what you choose to do for a living should matter and make a difference in your little acre of life. You can’t make anything or anyone be perfect but you shouldn’t settle either.

 

Could it be that my unwillingness to settle is what others call idealism? Even when faced with ample evidence to the contrary, I have still found it hard to accept that people can’t change, the world might never be a better place and that tomorrow isn’t another day. My Scarlett side, I guess. Because if we all just gave up, decided nothing we could do or say would make any difference or improvement, wouldn’t our world just spiral – negatively – into a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom and gloom?