Tired

 Do you ever get so emotionally worn out that you start shutting down? My wife told me I looked tired last night.

Sometimes I get very tired. Both physically and emotionally. I reach a point where I don’t have anything left to feel. I need to feel sorrow and empathy for those who are hurting. I need to feel angry about injustice. I need to feel hopeful about the future.

But I’m tired and I don’t feel.

It’s like I run out of feeling. I get overwhelmed with all the demands and expectations and go numb. I wish I had a greater capacity for emotion, a deeper well, but I don’t. And, when I get to that point of emptiness, I’m like dried up leaves rolling down the street in the wind. I want to connect, I want to empathize, but when I’m burned out of feelings, nothing rises to the surface. It’s like this bit from a Jackson Browne song:

It’s like a song I can hear
Playing right in my ear
That I can’t sing
I can’t help listening

And then I feel guilty. People get mad at me sometimes because I’m not always “there” for them like they want me to be. Some have gotten very, very mad. They had no idea what I was going through, and some of them wouldn’t have cared if they did know. They certainly never asked. They were going through their own pain, or loss, and I didn’t respond like they wanted me to, so they condemned me and strapped me to the whipping post. But I don’t hold it against them. I understand.

Sometimes I wish life was a little more like a TV show. A situation comedy. You know, where everything that happens is happening because of all the half heard conversations and assumptions everyone is making about everyone else. Joanie overhears the last sentence of something Chachi is saying to the Fonz and assumes he’s breaking up with her, so she talks to Ritchie, who then goes to the Fonz and yells at him for interfering, which is what Ritchie is doing, not the Fonz. Three’s Company did this for every show they did. Blah blah blah.

In the sitcoms, they always realize in the end how they have gotten it wrong, and they smile and laugh and the camera freeze frames on the big laugh. Credits role.

Life is so NOT a sitcom.

 Peace to you.


© LW Publishing 2011

It's Not You, It's Me

At one time in my life I was very devoted to chocolate. I was known for this. People made jokes about how much I loved chocolate, and I didn’t mind because it was a love affair worth celebrating. And I thought it would last forever.

Alas.

I still like chocolate, but I am no longer as devoted as I once was. Once upon a time I thought we were mated for life, and if given the choice I would have taken the chocolate every time.

But, over the past few years, if I’m to be honest, some of the spark has gone out of the relationship. I mean, I still like chocolate. I enjoy it sometimes. But it is no longer always my first choice, and I’m not exactly sure why. Sometimes I’m just feeling more like lemon or lime or who knows what. You could say I’m kind of “playing the field.” The other day, for instance, I was inexplicably drawn to something called “Blueberry Pie” ice cream. Swirls of blueberries in vanilla ice cream with chunks of pie crust mixed in.

Oh my.

In the freezer, right next to the blueberry ice cream is the chocolate. And it’s not just chocolate. It’s Chocolate Moose Tracks ice cream with all kinds of wonderful things in it. But it simply glared at me balefully while I left it sitting and took the blueberry instead.

Perhaps I should seek counseling? I just don’t know.

Occasionally, I’ll dip into the world of chocolate again, trying to capture some of the old romance. But, while I enjoy it, it’s just not what it used to be. And I feel kind of bad about it.

It’s not you, chocolate. You’ve done nothing wrong. It’s me. It really is. Somehow I’ve changed. I don’t know how or why. No one is to blame. Well, maybe I am, but I don't know what to do about it. It just happened. We can still be friends, can't we?

I promise to visit from time to time if you’ll have me.



Peace to you.



© LW Publishing 2011

Sticks and Stones

Some of the people who have hurt me the most over the years are completely oblivious to it – people who treated me like I was more of an idea or a thing than a person. And there were times when what was the most painful about it was their ambivalence and ignorance. They were so wrapped up in themselves and what they wanted that they had no idea what they were doing to me. Or they didn’t care.

I’m not saying I’m any better. I know it must be true of me as well. I know I’ve done this to others, especially when I was younger. It’s a trait of the immature and the self centered. And you’d think people would grow out of it, but some don’t. It’s so easy to objectify people in the pursuit of our own desires. We care about causes. We care about ourselves. We care about injustice and religion and politics. But all of those things become sticks and stones for hurting others if we don’t genuinely care about people like we should.

I’m saddened by the fact that, in my weaknesses and my inability, I fail to care for some of these people like I should. Like I want to. People I care about. People who might not even want to, but they will hurt me with their thrashing through life.

So you learn. You learn that sometimes it doesn’t much matter what you say and do, certain people are not going to listen to you. They aren’t going to take any lessons from you. You learn sometimes that you are not the person who is going to be an agent of change in their life. And, despite what you may have been told, meaningful relationships are about how we change one another. If your friendships, your relationships, don’t involve good, healthy change in your life and in the lives of the people you are connected with, then those aren’t relationships. They’re acquaintances. If you aren’t growing in kindness and compassion and peace through your relationships, then something is wrong.

The reality is, like it or not, there are some people you could love perfectly, if that were possible, and it still wouldn’t be enough because they’re too busy loving themselves or hating themselves or taking care of themselves or making sure they have what they want, or what they think they need. There’s no room left for you in their life. You can come or go, they don't really care. You're of no use to them except, maybe, as a punching bag. And they will hurt you over and over again if you let them.

Sometimes it isn’t a question of forgiveness. It’s a question of survival.


Luke 23:34
Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Small Things

Years ago, I worked at a factory making tubing for auto parts. Those weren’t the best of times.

It was a loud, depressing place, full of machines. Some were automatic, others you had to manually operate, bending different tubes into shapes that would somehow fit in the engine compartment of one car or another. It was hot, grueling work. The only real plus was the pay check, which wasn’t much of a plus.

But there were a few of us who became friends because we were stuck together on one of the machines. This machines was huge. And by huge I mean HUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE. It was practically as big as a small house. A team of operators would sit at different parts of the machine and do their piece, then send it along to the next part, assembly line fashion, until the part finally fell off the end into some big wooden box. Talk about being cogs in the machine. We were cogs.

But we were singing cogs.

Right about that time, the song “We Are the World,” came out. It was on the radio constantly, blaring through the factory. And this one group of us who were on the big machine, learned all the parts and began impersonating the different singers as we lip synched to the song. We did this and we laughed so hard. It was really funny. I mean, I suppose it was funnier because of where we were and all that, but it was funny. It was a relief in the day.

One of the guys was named John. He did the Joe Cocker bit. And it was a perfect fit. He really looked like Joe Cocker, but even funnier than Joe Cocker looks. It was hysterical.

And out of that little experience, we struck up a conversation. Then we started to hang out a little. Not a lot, but a little, here and there. And eventually I thought of him as a good friend. And we stayed friends over the years, long after I left the machine shop, mostly because of John. He would always call me to keep in touch, which. I wasn’t very good at. In my past, too many people had left and never looked back, so I kind of got used to the next thing being the next thing. I didn’t do a lot of looking back. I still don’t. It’s not easy for me. But John kept in touch, so we kept in touch. We’d talk now and then. We went out to eat a few times. We started going to a comic convention together every year. It was a blast seeing him.

We were friends up until his death a few years ago. He had a stroke. He was in his early forties and it was a great tragedy. But we had a good friendship. We shared life in common. He came to share my faith. And it taught me to appreciate the small things, the goofy little experiences that we share together in life. Laughing and singing and sharing things in common. These things are seeds for friendships and connections that can be meaningful and lasting.

Today, I thought of him, and I was missing my friend.

Peace to you.


© LW Publishing 2011

Unpredictable

For the life of me, I can’t figure out people. People are chaos theory personified. Which is hard for me because I’m a figure it out kind of person. I like seeing how things add up to something. But people don’t add up. I’m constantly surprised by what people do. Sometimes it’s a pleasant surprise, many times it’s not.

People are just too complicated. There are too many factors involved. Too many experiences that shape a heart. And it makes us all so unpredictable.

While I was typing this, one of my kids started another argument with another one of my kids. Which is extremely predicable. You just never know when it’s going to happen or why. It’s completely unpredictable.

I like to read a few blogs, and I can’t predict what people are going to post. I mean, you can read a blog and say to yourself, “that was the kind of thing I expect from that person.” But you never know just what someone might say. And don’t even try to figure out what people are going to do. I don’t even know what I’m going to do five minutes from now. I mean, I have some ideas. But you never know.

Some people are more consistent than others. In fact, it’s nice to be around people who are more consistent because they seem less dangerous. It’s like a guy who might be violent at any moment. His family lives in terror, not just of what he will do, but of what he might do, at any moment, because he’s unpredictable.

I’m not the dangerous type. Not really. But I honestly believe I have some challenges relationally because people can’t figure out what I’m going to say next. When it comes to words, I’m very unpredictable. I mean, I could be talking to you and then suddenly





© LW Publishing 2011