A Few "Rules and Regs"

A Few "Rules and Regs"
(Not-quite-Commandments.)

#1.When you can't change the situation, change your attitude.

I have a neighbor who, like me, has to haul water to support his being able to live where we do. He says he; "..hates doing it." He has contracted to drill two wells on his land, one 850' and the other around 500' deep. He has come up dry both times. At 10 to $14 a foot that's a chunk to throw down a dusty hole..so he can't change the water situation, he has to haul.

He could move of course. Or contract with the local water company to lay pipe five miles to his land. I guess that's a possibility for around thirty thousand +.

He could get a commercial water hauler to bring it out at 50 or $60 per thousand.

He can continue to bitch about hauling.

Or, he can accept having to haul water as part of the price for living where he has chosen to be and get on with life. In other words, to paraphrase the song, quit carping, get happy.

In the days when I was doing therapy for a living I can't tell you how many clients I would see who were faced with just this kind of dilemma. Of course my training forbade me to give any kind of straightforward advice. Not that I could have anyway. In those days I was stuck in the same dead end, complaining about a bad relationship and not seeing the clear and simple choice.

I must admit that one therapist I saw when I was seeking help for myself when I was in an abusive relationship with a rager said; "Well, if you can just stick it out while you get a little bloody for awhile longerit might work out."

He may have been presenting me with the answer in a less obvious way so that I wouldn't resist the logic of it; this is commonly called "Provocative Therapy" in the biz. Or, he may have been naive. Whichever it was, I woke up and got out.

Like a Chinese proverb, genuine truths are simple and straightforward but we Western psycobabbled thinkers are in love with complexity so we don't take them seriously. They remain true nonetheless and we have to revisit them over and over again to remind ourselves that most dilemmas come with built in solutions; "do-it-or-don't-do-it" being the most obvious. Spending a lot of time on the "whys" of anything will cause long delays in making choices. We human beings have an incredible tolerance for suffering which makes for a lot of profitable therapy business.

My advice?

Choose.

#2. You only have to pay for your mistakes once.

I don't know about you but I have spent an inordinate amount of time feeling guilty for the bad things I have done. In my first marriage I had numerous affairs and destroyed all trust and love between my wife and I. My behavior also deeply hurt my two daughters and just a few years ago my granddaughter even questioned me about why I had hurt her grandmother so. I spent years berating myself for all of it.

I apologized to my first wife, told my kids I was sorry I had been so narcissistic and had hurt them, spent time in therapy, wrote articles addressing the pain caused by betrayal and its legacy. In general I felt like a jerk and a bad person for about twenty years. Holding on to all that guilt and shame set me up to stay in several really abusive relationships over that time. I guess I felt that I had to stay in them and make them work as a kind of penance. It has taken all that time for me to get to a place of realization that I can't change the past and I can't continue to contaminate the present with my regrets about it. Nor can I allow my children to continue to persecute me for what I did those many years ago. I got the message! I know I did the wrong thing. I paid the dues..and I never betrayed another relationship again.

All we can do about the wrongs we commit is;

1. Recognize and acknowledge them.

2. Make amends for them (apologize for our hurting another.)

3. Change ourselves so that we don't do the same things again.

4. Forgive ourselves...................and

5. Move on!

If we don't do this last thing we become as Lot's wife, stuck in the past and turned into a pillar of salt, in other words, infertile in our lives. And as for those who would keep us frozen in time by continuing to blame us, that becomes their problem and not ours.

Paying over and over again for the same mistakes keeps us AND them stuck in the past.

#3. Take a break from Reality now and then.

Garrison Kiellor has a saying that he drops into his story telling once in awhile, "Sometimes you have to look reality in the face and deny it." It always gets a good laugh from audiences made up of people like you and I who would like to do just that but feel some kind of obligation to stay plugged in so we won't miss out or fail to do our duty to society by witnessing tragedy and feeling helpless to do anything about it or guilty over our apathy. I once took a three-month trip in a van that didn't have a radio. I was out of touch with everything that was going on in the world. I never saw a newspaper, watched a TV or listened to a news broadcast the whole time. When I returned and tuned in again it was as if no time had elapsed at all. The same stories were taking up the headline spaces, the same pains and joys, ups and downs, tragedies and triumphs..just the names had changed.

Allistar Cook, a long time newsman and writer, once reported that the happiest people he knew were those involved in professional sports. He said; "They never listen to the news, never even vote in an election and never get involved in all the hullabaloo about politics at all. All that they do is concentrate on getting better at their game whether it be golf, or baseball or pool. And they seem to be very happy people."

There is something to that; "Ignorance is bliss." stuff you know. We don't have to make a career of ignorance to take time out now and then just to be. When rafting down the river of life we don't have to be constantly preparing for and then recovering from the white water. Take a break in the eddies and enjoy going round and round.

See the scenery more than once.

Re-read a good book.

See a good, non-challenging movie like; "It's a Wonderful Life".

Love a flower..really love it.

Deny reality for a day.

#4. "I Know My Rights!"

Usually when someone says this it really isn't true. What they are really saying is; "I want it my way!" In other words, they're having a tantrum. You and I have probably shouted this in some form at one time or another in order to throw the other person, who we secretly believe to be right, off balance. Wouldn't it be great if, in one of those moments, we could switch gears and say; "Maybe you ARE right. But I'm having a hard time accepting that right now. Give me some time to think about it and research it."

We're never going to be able to do it huh?

Probably not. But it's worth putting into the storage room of our brain and perhaps, on some sunny day, it will just pop out when it's needed most.

We spend an enormous amount of time defending our "rights" in this country. We probably inherited this tendency from our ancestors who came here to get some. We're always afraid that someone is going to steal our freedom awayany minute. They'll take our guns, our religion, our privacy, our parking place, our money.fill in the blank about the thing you're afraid they will take. And of course, as usual, being aware about rights is a good thing. We really do have to stay alert to the thousand-and-one-mice-nibbling syndrome exercised by national, state and local governments, big business interests, and our kids..most especially our kids, who have been granted extraordinary powers to shape our society by the commercial media which wants to gain access to all the money we give them. Our kids have bought this fantasy of course. They really do believe that they run the world and therefore deserve.

Incredibly, we seem to buy it too.

A quote from former CBS newsman Dan Schorr in his book, "Staying Tuned" is right on the mark. Schorr quotes his uncle who shouted at him one day; "That's the trouble with you Americans. You know all about your rights and you don't know anything about your responsibilities."

In many cases we have failed to teach our kids about how rights are derived from responsibilities. How rights are earned. How your rights are not always more important than someone else's just because they re yours.

Stuff like that.

Wouldn't it be great to hear a kid, or an adult, shout out; "I know my responsibilities!" and then act accordingly?

#5. Know When to Quit.

A few weeks ago I heard a song called; "Ashes Don't Burn." by a fine singer from Colorado, Molly O'Brian. I was struck by the common sense of the title. Of course it was about a dead love can never be resurrected again kind of thing. And what a great metaphor; ashes don't burn.

I am a master of this lesson I want you to know. I married my second wife twice. And if I hadn't met Elizabeth I might have blown on those ashes again, so wedded was I to the premise that love-conquers-all, even reason.

Back in my therapist days I often met clients who didn't get the "ashes" message either. I used to give them my "hope" story. It goes like this; Like any good parachutist one must keep Hope alive in any relationship, especially when things look bleak. Keep Hope alive all the way down; but remember to pull the rip chord before SPLAT!

No relationship should lead to destruction of the self.

Of course we always teach best what we need to learn, so I was a very good teacher for this one.

I think "Ashes Don't Burn" is an even better metaphor. When the thing has grown cold, there just isn't any use in blowing on it hopefully. Spouses of addicts, of every sort, spend an inordinate amount of time huffing and puffing. It's mainly because of the intermittent reinforcement thing. You know about that right? When you teach a chicken to press a certain lever you do it by feeding him every time he or she, in random pecking, hits the right one. After the chicken gets the right lever you don't feed him every time, you feed him every other time and then progressively less as time goes on. The chicken will continue to peck at the right lever even if he only gets rewarded every tenth time or less. Intermittent reinforcement is a very powerful teaching tool. And saves a lot of chicken feed too.

Humans learn in the same way. She used to say she loved you every day. You learned to peck the right levers to get that response. Now she seldom says anything about love, but you continue to hit the lever that used to elicit that response. In fact, you hit it a lot with very little response. Just enough to keep you pecking though.

Ever hopeful and a little frantic, you, and the chicken, put a lot of energy into maintaining these relationships while the "trainer" puts out very little.

If you give up pecking altogether you will suddenly get a lot of "chicken feed" from the trainer to get you back into lever pecking. Unless you finally get the message, intermittent reinforcement will soon begin again and you will be hooked once more.

Well; pardon my metaphor mixing but I hope the message is received by whomever needs it. If you know in your heart of hearts that hope really is lost, forget the blowing and pull the rip cord or you'll land on your dead ash(es).

SPLAT!

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