Inglath Cooper's Blog, page 15

Resentment Equals Rust

Have you ever tried to ride a bike with a rusty chain?

The sound is awful, and worse yet, pedaling becomes next to impossible.

That’s how I think of resentment and its effect in our lives. It’s like rust, eating away at the very engine that drives us forward each day.

It’s not that we shouldn’t acknowledge the hurtful things that happen to us. I think acknowledging them is the first step in moving past them. But sometimes, we get stuck there. Rusting away under the acidic assault of dwelling.

Recognize any of these question? What if I had. . . How could she dare. . . Why would anyone. . .

Here’s a small example. I recently had to make a phone call regarding a utility bill that needed to be paid for a piece of property my husband and I bought. We weren’t sure how to set it up or even which county office was the appropriate one for what we needed. So I had to make a few phone calls before finally landing in the correct place. Everyone I spoke to up until this point could not have been nicer or more helpful.

But then the person I needed to talk to answered my very first question with a tone that let me know things weren’t going to go well. She clearly thought I was of sub-par intelligence.

It’s hard not to let something like this bother you. And I could have easily let it ruin my day. But once I drew in that initial breath and slowly blew it back out again, I decided that her behavior was not really about me. It’s about how she chooses to interact with the world, and that’s not my choice.

How can we keep our chains from rusting?

Accept that we cannot change the behavior of others. Only our own. We can make a deliberate choice not to let another individual be the trigger for our happiness or unhappiness.
Think about this quote: “Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something, and has lost something.” – H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
Realize that we are far healthier when we focus our minds on the positive, on the good things that happen to us, on the good things we can put back into the world.

Let’s put a little oil on our chains today and pedal on.

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Loyalty and Betrayal

I was driving home from a visit to my dad’s yesterday afternoon when I spotted a dog sitting on the hill in front of my grandma’s house. No one lives there now, so that’s how I knew the dog didn’t live there.

He had that posture, that look about him I’ve seen so many times before. Waiting. He was waiting for his person to come back and get him. Someone had probably decided they didn’t want him anymore, drove him somewhere away from his own house, opened the car door and made him get out.

I would like to think this doesn’t happen. But I have seen it done, seen, too, the results of it in the dogs who end up at our local adoption center. There is a sadness in these dogs that does not immediately heal.

I had some food in the car. I pulled in the driveway, and two of my daughters got out to help call him. I keep a spare leash in the console, and I got that out, too. We called him and offered the food, but he was too scared and ran away from us.

It would not surprise me if he came right back to that hillside spot as soon as we were out of sight.

Dogs love their people. It is not in them to conceive of this kind of betrayal. They will sit and wait for their person to come back longer than we humans could think of doing.

Their nearly bottomless capacity for love and devotion is one of the reasons I am so drawn to them. Volunteering in dog rescue has shown me how often we humans are not deserving of them.

If I see him there when I drive by this afternoon, I will stop and try again.

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When They Say You Can’t

It does give us extra impetus, doesn’t it?

This has been true for me in a major area of my life: writing.

There was a time when writing as a career seemed like an impossible dream. And granted, not that many years ago, the mountain that led to publication was a pretty steep climb. There were all sorts of reasons to believe it would never happen.

Statistics declaring the very small percentage of writers who ever actually saw their books in print. And then beyond that, an even smaller percentage whose books went on to become a success. No shortage of rain on my parade.

But when you really, really want something, you have to push past the naysayers. And I really wanted to write stories. Even during the times when my own self doubt clanged in unison with feedback from the world in general, I wanted to write.

I think the outcome has been a result of pushing past those times when giving in and giving up didn’t seem like such a bad idea. I’m glad I stayed with it, glad I didn’t listen to what others thought would be nearly impossible for me to do.

Is there an area in your life where giving in and giving up is often tempting? If it’s something that’s really important to you, if it’s something that defines who you are, don’t. Okay? Hang in there and prove them wrong.

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Random Acts of Kindness

It takes so little to shine some light on another’s day. A soft touch, a kind word, an understanding smile. These gifts cost us nothing, and their value is immeasurable. Doesn’t it make you feel good when someone is unexpectedly nice to you? I know it does me.

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Cherish Your Loved Ones

I always loved my grandparents. Even when I was little, I knew they were special, and that I was lucky to have them in my life.  Each of them gave me many reasons to love them deeply.

My Grandpa Holland taught me the joy of helping dogs in need, showed me that Hounds just make great friends.  He introduced me to the back roads of our county on Sunday mornings when he would take my sister and me with him in his little red truck on what we called his “rounds” – the places he went regularly to visit with other farmers and friends.

My Grandma Holland taught me what it means to put others before yourself.  She grew up in a family of ten siblings, and her mother died when she was thirteen.  She was a child of the Depression years, and that time shaped her in ways that followed her throughout her life.  I loved hearing stories of the meals she shared with her brothers and sisters at a big harvest style table, how they would swing from grape vines over the creek in the summers and pick pawpaws at the edge of the woods near their house.  And she always carried Juicy Fruit in her purse.  It just seems right that a purse should smell like Juicy Fruit.

My Grandma Johnson was the youngest child in her family, and her parents were older by the time they had her.  She became their caretaker before she was a teenager, and she was self-sufficient at an age when I was still watching Scooby-Doo.  She started making biscuits when she was eight, and I have never to this day had one that can begin to rival hers.

My Grandpa Johnson, who at age 75, sometimes had trouble remembering what happened the day before, could tell me the number on the motel door where he stayed the night before shipping out to Germany for World War II.  When I was very young, it was hard for him to talk about his experiences there as a prisoner of war, but as I grew older, he would share bits and pieces about how long they would go without food, the potato peelings and turnips the guards would throw them when they did get fed, how when they were finally rescued, one of his fellow soldiers died after eating too many of the doughnuts brought to them by the Red Cross.

Their world was a totally different world from the one I grew up in.  And today, looking back, it seems even more hard to believe that was their life.  But it was.  And the bits and pieces of it that they shared with me are what I will carry with me throughout my life.

I think of the times when I sat and listened to them talk of their experiences, and my only regret is that I didn’t sit longer or ask them to talk about their lives more often.  I can still see my Grandpa Johnson sitting under the maple shade tree in their yard, stringing a metal wash pan full of green beans, his sun-browned arthritic hands quick at the task.  There I am beside him in that orange and white nylon web lounge chair, hugging my knees to my chest, rapt as he transports me to that place and time.

I miss them all so much.

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Beginnings

Isn’t it true that we don’t always recognize beginnings because we’re so focused on the ending? There have been many times in my life when I thought a closed door meant finished, over. But that hasn’t always proven to be true, and I think what I’ve learned from those experiences is patience and the ability to see that time does indeed unveil new beginnings, often ones we never expected. Often better than we could have imagined.

 

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Nashville Soundtrack

Egos and Kiddy Pools

My Grandma Holland called it uppity. You know, too big for your britches, thinking a little too highly of yourself.

I don’t think I’ve ever been an overly-confident person, but I guess there are phases in our lives when we might start to believe our own press.

I’ve decided that God has a special radar for these moments and a pretty good sense of humor for issuing corrections.

I was fifteen when I went with my aunt and uncle and cousins to Myrtle Beach one summer. I wasn’t yet allowed to date, sixteen being the landmark for that to occur, but boys had started to act as if they might like to ask me out on a date. And yes, that does do something for a girl’s ego at that age.

Mine was extra puffy that first afternoon at the swimming pool. I was wearing a fairly teeny lime bikini and had already gotten a start on my summer tan.

When everyone else went up to our rooms to get ready for dinner, I decided to stay on a little longer with the book I was reading. I think I was the only one left at the pool. When I heard someone whistling from the balcony above, I wasn’t exactly being conceited in thinking it might be directed at me.

I stayed in my chair another minute or two without taking my eyes off the pages of my book. But then I stood, grabbing my towel and letting myself glance up at the source of the whistles. Three guys who appeared to be seventeen or eighteen years old. Cute, too. Waving now with a, “Hey, baby!”

It was flattering. Who wouldn’t be flattered?

I smiled back at them and set off across the pool, book in one hand, open can of V-8 in the other, deliberately looking out at the ocean to avoid meeting their gazes. I might have secretly liked the attention, but I had no idea what to do with it.

I tried to appear as if this kind of thing happened to me all the time, that maybe I even found it a little boring.

I concentrated on the sound of the ocean waves, the smell of salt in the air. As soon as they realized I was ignoring them, they began whistling again. It was just as I decided to toss them another smile that the tile flooring beneath my feet completely disappeared and turned into water.

At the same time I heard the splash, I realized I had walked into the middle of the kiddy pool, which was all of eighteen inches deep. I landed on the bottom, hard, pitching forward. The remainder of my V-8 emptied into the pool, my book hitting the surface and absorbing the water like a sponge.

The boys didn’t laugh, although I cannot imagine how they managed not to. I also have no idea how I climbed out of that pool with a shred of dignity intact.

As ego checks go, it was darned effective, if not especially subtle. Correction noted.

 

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Wanting What We Have

Most anything we have in our lives, we once wanted.  Sometimes, a lot.  So much so that we would have given anything for it to be ours.

A relationship.  A new house.  A career.  And then we get it.  It’s kind of like that old adage about the dog who chases the car and finally catches it.  Now what?

It’s easy enough to go on to the next thing.  Checked that box.  And we’re wanting the new, the different, the has-to-be-better.

Our culture is built on this philosophy in so many ways.  The latest iPhone hasn’t finished synching the contacts of its purchaser before rumors of the next version start to circulate – and it’ll be so much better because it has this new feature and that new feature.  And suddenly, the one we have doesn’t seem so great anymore.

Or what about our work?  We haven’t fully appreciated the success of making it to our current rung before we’re looking up at the next one and thinking how great it would be to get there.  Wishing we could be like so and so who’s already lounging around in the very spot we’d like to have.

We could easily live our lives chasing this loop of infinity.  Never quite getting where we think we ought to be because there’s another must-have just over the next horizon.  But if we’re bent on discontent, always wanting what we don’t have instead of what we do have, happiness is going to be an elusive commodity.

Maybe then contentment isn’t so much a destination as it is a commitment.  To be happy with where we are while we’re there.  With what we have while we have it.  Life is definitely made richer and fuller by setting goals and reaching for new milestones.  But when it’s all said and done, maybe the bigger accomplishment will come from continuing to want what we have while we have it.

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Break It Down to Choice

Making big changes in our lives can feel completely overwhelming.

We get on the scale after a few months of ignoring it, only to discover the number is twenty pounds higher than it’s ever been. We open a credit card statement with an alarming number in the amount owed column. Our closet looks like a small bomb went off, knocking all the clothes from their hangers to the floor.

At this point, the big picture situation in which we find ourselves can seem like a mountain too tall to climb. But so many of the undesirable situations we find ourselves in occurred only after a certain number of times in which we checked the yes box.

Yes, I’ll stop again this afternoon for a chocolate muffin treat from Starbucks. Yes, I’ll go ahead and get those shoes that are on sale and catch up on the credit card next month. Yes, I’ll just throw this outfit in the corner of my closet instead of hanging it up.

Moment by moment, day by day choice is the vehicle that takes us to these destinations we eventually wish we never had to visit. The reality of our arrival can be enough to put us in a state of paralysis. I’ll never get out of this fix.

But the truth is we got there one individual choice at a time. And if the knitting together of those choices resulted in an outcome we’re not happy with, we also have the ability to unravel our situation by reversing those choices.

We substitute our afternoon stop for the chocolate muffin stress reliever with a twenty minute walk in a beautiful spot. We leave the next pair of must-have shoes for someone else to buy because we already have a similar pair anyway. We take the extra fifteen seconds to hang up the dress we wore to work.

It’s empowering, really, to realize how meaningful a single choice is. It doesn’t seem so in the moment. But when those choices are added up and occur often over a long period of time, they become very meaningful.

I’ve thought a lot about this recently. About how a reasonable amount of effort applied each day, whether it’s to exercise or some goal we’re trying to meet, consistent, deliberate choices truly do  make the difference between being fit or out of shape. Being at a weight that makes us happy or not. Having control of our spending and our debt or not. Walking into our closet and feeling pleased by what we see or not.

Controlling our choices may be simple, but no one, least of all me, would say it’s easy. A slip, an indulgence now and then won’t build that mountain we do not want to end up having to climb. But making the choices that we know create the kind of big picture that keeps us the happiest, makes us feel the best about ourselves, is determined by our everyday, individual, moment by moment choices.

In thinking about all of this, I’m fine-tuning my awareness of even the small choices I’m making, especially when it comes to my weak-points.

It’s good to know where we’re going. And how we’re going to get there. Or not.

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