Shining a Light

There are times in one's life that seem so easy one takes them for granted. And then come the inevitable difficult times. 

A spiritual leader I follow talks about rehearsing for those difficult times by appreciating what is good; stopping to smell the roses so to speak; like building up a fortress of contentment and ease with the present moment such that it can buttress you against the difficult times that will inevitably come.

Sometimes, difficult or sad things collide with one another creating a labyrinth of difficult issues that seem hard to navigate.

If I try to describe this feeling, it's like things are out of place; like there's confusion in the natural order of things.

Then, it's time to walk; to let the dust settle so to speak; to let the dirt settle in the jar and fall to the bottom of the jar so that the water becomes clear.

Then one sees more clearly.

Yes, a pet will die, maybe earlier than we thought. It's heartbreaking but it's a tender time too; when we savor the moments left; when love is abundant and transparent. Be Here Now.

Relationships may end. Wouldn't it be lovely if we could end those relationships with grace; with civility and a sense of love. All that love. Did it just vanish? So much abundant love, gone up in smoke? Highly unlikely, I say. Something is covering the heart; a denial that seems necessary to do what is being done, but love itself remains, even if hidden from view.

As part of the Compassion Prison Project, which I highly recommend, I exchange letters with a man on death row. I think you might be surprised at how easy it is to do this; two souls writing to one another. That's the way I see it.

Tough love. Does that really work? I am not an advocate. Teaching, showing, modelling, providing opportunities for people to dig deep into their core and be resilient; that's worth doing, absolutely, but without love in the heart, without a sense of a soul touching a soul, I am not sure you are doing any good.

We, as humans, have so much capacity to shine a light in the darkness. I wonder why we let that opportunity go so readily.

Hope springs

Some of my friends have begun to move out of 'the family home' into town houses and apartments. Some of them are doing this because the children have moved out and some of them are doing that because their financial or marital status has altered. The 50s, it seems to me, judging from what I see happening about me, is a time of re-assessment of one's life and where one plans to go from here.

Yesterday, I saw a girlfriend's new 'townhouse'. It's ultra modern, with massive light but very little view; the sort of dwelling where there are lots of windows where you see the sky, but little else. In my city there is a huge amount of building going on and most of it in the inner suburbs is very smart apartment buildings. Overlooking issues have become the new norm and if one can't rectify these issues with planting as one does with houses (think: Chris and Marie's 'Neighbors Be Gone plants') then the emphasis becomes on capturing the light.

I tried to imagine my husband and I in such a set up and knew immediately that it wouldn't suit either of us. I wondered where this couple had put all their 'things' and when I came home, to the house I have shared with my husband, four children and two dogs, it started to dawn on me that I don't have as many 'things' as I had thought. I only really go upstairs to clean and to gather or deliver clothing. The entire upstairs area is devoted to my boys. My younger son, being a media/artistic type has three work stations up there all devoted to his passion and my other son, being an IT nerd keeps his IT apparatus up there in his room as well.

Downstairs, I suddenly realized that the three wicker baskets of sporting apparatus didn't belong to me or my husband, either. And, the game console next to the television wasn't mine. In fact, when push came to shove, and if my husband was prepared to let go of his treasures (think: tools, bits of wood, and crap) in the garage and go through his mountain of files and 'goodnessknowswhat' in his study, we could fit into that town house perfectly well, too.

For reasons completely unknown to us, biological reasons over which we have no control, my husband and I are both nurturers. I wanted to be a mother. I couldn't make sense of my life in any other way back then when those decisions needed to be made and I remain eternally grateful that I was given that opportunity. It did complete me as a woman.

My husband also wanted a family and he has always taken his responsibilities to us very seriously. Christmases tend to be a bit extravagant in our family because I go off and buy the gifts only to discover that my husband has also been out buying gifts. At the end of the day, we shower them with love in any number of ways and they have repaid us in spades, being remarkably loving and enjoyable people to be around.

I don't think our future lies in one of those swanky apartments. It's quite impossible to imagine grandchildren in such a set-up and it's just not us to say, "Well, it's just us now". The boys will move out in their own good time and perhaps we'll move out of here one day into a smaller place, but to a place that enables someone to stay if they want/need and a place that welcomes the grandchildren.

I think you do have to embrace change. We're a bit slower than others because we've had this big family spread out over many years and in any case, we'd have to renovate before we sell. One day, it will be right, I suppose, to think about the next step for us and to move on someplace else. But, what will always hold us back is this sense that we are still young and that we have plenty of time. There is this continuity throughout our lives; that we are just still navigating our way through life together and in no way should be thinking about winding down. I'm not saying the time won't come. It's just that I can't envisage it as yet.

As I think about the way my husband views me and I view him it would be accurate to say that what we see when we look at one another is the same person we met well over three decades ago. There's the odd stray grey hair and wrinkles around our eyes now, but in our minds we are forever young.

These days, we both stumble around trying to remember this or that. He catches me out not processing the name of something. "What is the cafe called?" he'll ask. "Give me the first letter," I'll plead. "It starts with E," he'll say. It bugs me that I can't get it and he'll make a big deal about it; that a cut of the cane would help my memory (and it does). And, I constantly have to find his keys for him or figure out where he put his glasses. Through it all, we endure with grace and love.

There have been some very hard times. As the therapist says in 'Hope Springs' "every marriage has terrible years" and we've had our share of rough times. We've made it through those rough times. Spring has sprung here and so too has my sense of well-being. I feel sure now that we'll be perfectly all right.

Deep Self

The academic/writing work I've been doing asks that I consider what motivates someone to make certain choices and most importantly, what motivates them to choose a certain person to be their wife or husband. It suggests that we are drawn to someone for reasons that we may not be able to articulate; that we go along almost hostage to our deeper thoughts. Our attraction to that person is made up of parts that we don't entirely understand.

In the writing I am studying the man is obsessed with a girl; a girl that is obsessed with another man. It's a love triangle. In fact, the man obsessed with the girl does have his way with her, when the man with whom she is obsessed has an epiphany and realizes that he must walk away from her. His troubles are such that in order to create the least collateral damage, he needs to go solo.

The man, after all that obsessing understands finally that he and the girl were never meant to be together; that she isn't moving towards him but rather moving away from her husband. In effect, no one of them was right for the other and it's time for all of them to move on.

Having spent the best part of the weekend reading the source material I found myself, surprisingly, most struck by the third wheel in the story; the man who wants the girl that he can't have. A tortured soul due to his obsession, it is only when he is still enough for long enough to allow communion with his Deep Self that he can see reality clearly. Within him was the truth all along but only late in the story can he see all the players for what they are; for what he is, too. Finally, he can lay the matter to rest and move on with his life.

It's the poignant story of longing; of soulful longing of that which was never meant to be ours.  Whilst we leave the characters at this point, something tells us that they will be all right; that their darkest days may well be behind them.

It makes me wonder if one of the most courageous things we can do is to reach into our Deep Self, to recognize ourselves for just who we are; what we think; what we obsess about and to go the extra step of revealing that inner world to our partners. Can we truly say that we are united, body and soul, if we keep that understanding to ourselves? Perhaps, we hold back from revealing ourselves in depth to a husband or wife because we suspect that there are parts of us that are not at all likable; selfish; demanding; hungry; wanton; greedy.

Is it better, we may wonder, to hold a little of that detail back and to accept the other just as they are; to count our blessings; to be grateful. Do we, in fact, through marriage, ask too much of the other; to accept us for all our failings and we, in turn, accept our other for his or hers? This is the tango of life and devotion to one another is a noble and wonderful act, in spite of some possible incompatibility; some part of the soul that may remain in reserve, unrequited.

" No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main," wrote John Donne, yet it is true there is a part of us that is nearly always alone;  perhaps should be alone.

I think this is exactly why I write. There is something about the essence of me that I don't really want to take alone to my grave.

Strength

In the past several days I have answered a myriad of questionnaires about myself in the interests of having my lovely psychologist understand me. In the second session today, she waded through all the answered questionnaires I brought along at her request and this led to further questions. She concluded the session by noting that I was more complex than she had originally thought.

I laughed. It most certainly isn’t the first time in my life that I have been called “complex” or “complicated” but she assured me that she loved complex and found me “interesting”. Quite honestly, if she were not my psychologist we could be great friends. She dresses in an incredibly exotic way in long, flowy dresses, bright colours and Indian style silver jewellery. She has acrylic nails painted bright red and all in all she strikes me as wonderfully colourful and complex herself.

Some matters were, however, already crystal clear in her mind. It was my nature to be demur ever since I was a wee small girl. I exhibited “self sacrificing” qualities and put other’s needs ahead of my own. She saw all that quite clearly, she said.

An important matter that she needed an answer to was what I hoped to gain from our time together and I told her that I was currently in a transitional stage of my life. A nurturer by nature, my family needed less of me. Sure, there was still plenty to do but I wasn’t run off my feet any longer and the time had come when I had the opportunity to achieve some things just for me.

I hoped to come out of the sessions feeling comfortable with doing some things just for myself; not backing down from my own desires the first time I smelled my husband’s ambivalence or the first time it appeared that my choices might in any way cramp the style of other people in my life, or the first time I lost my nerve.

I told her, for example, that I was disappointed that I wasn’t going to be visiting my daughter in the UK shortly as previously planned. When my husband had not encouraged me in my plans to do so on my own, neither giving his blessing nor saying “no”, I had simply backed away from the plan altogether.

“I want to help you to be harder on yourself in those situations from now on. If it is something that you really want, then there are ways to make it happen. But, what hurdles do we have to get over? Would you feel guilty to get your own way?”

I confess I would. If something does not come to me openly and from the heart, I don’t want it. But, perhaps that is the kind of thinking that I must change; pushing forward to express what I want and how important something is to me.

Submissive women are very inclined to be compassionate, or so it seems to me. It is our nature or mine anyway, to be forgiving; to accept that we are all flawed in some way, that we make mistakes and that sometimes we are hurt unwittingly. We are givers, not takers and we want to please. We want our loved ones to be happy and we feel a strong bond to those special people in our lives. When we make mistakes ourselves we want to mend that net; to give our heartfelt apology and reunite.

Without going into details, take it from me that I have gone the extra mile many times to see things from other’s points of view and to accept what is really unacceptable. Only once or twice have I drawn the line with someone else’s behaviour towards me – completely unacceptable and unforgivable, even to me.

There have been moments when my husband has hurt me and he has asked me to explore his motives. Had he meant to hurt me? No, he certainly had not. But, what if someone acted towards me in a very hurtful way in full knowledge that his or her behaviour would hurt me deeply? What if the behaviour could be interpreted as callous or selfish? What if the behaviour broke the seal of trust between us?

It is my strongest inclination to want to forgive and to demonstrate my compassion by accepting behaviour that in most peoples’ eyes is unforgivable. It is much more comfortable for me to do so. To not do this would leave me feeling for the rest of my life that if I could have bent just a little more, I might have saved something that was very precious. Trees do topple over in fierce winds but not the strongest trees. They hold firm against the vagaries of nature.

As I contemplate my natural inclinations, I pause to wonder. Perhaps, I have not been weak at all but too strong for my own good.

The other

I have given lots of thought to how control fits into my life but it is only very recently that I have managed to put the bits together for myself and create one full picture. I feel much better equipped to understand the need for control not just through the eyes of the bottom but also through the eyes of the top.

In Stephen Covey’s ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’, the fifth habit states, “Seek first to understand and then to be understood.”

I think I very much wanted to understand the other but I was missing a clear understanding for various reasons. Perhaps I was too absorbed with the personal experience through my own set of eyes to give due attention to what was happening to the other person; the person that makes it all possible for me to experience what I do. Perhaps I was holding onto ideas about how I thought it should be and could not see the truth before my eyes. We learn when we are ready to learn and although I learned late I am grateful to have learned finally. I am being vague quite deliberately because the specifics of any given person do not relate to the simple yet powerful message I wish to convey.

If you read the words of the Dalai Lama, as I have recently, there is one word he uses over and over, compassion. When we seek to understand someone else, someone who means a great deal to us, we give ourselves to them. We surrender. This surrender takes place both ways, if we are attuned to the possibility. The line is blurred as to who is the top and who is the bottom at certain pivotal moments in our lives because a form of loving has taken place that does not ask, well, who is the top and who is the bottom?

When we seek to understand the other and achieve that outcome as I feel I have now finally done, there is at first a sense of shock and then very quickly a new found sense of peace. I seek and am the bottom in the dynamic and yet I bring to the role my strength of mind; my intent for a positive outcome; my understanding of the other. In so many meaningful and powerful ways there is no bottom nor top but just a whole when those two complementary entities come together in a spirit of union. This is when a spiritual experience takes place. This is service to the other.

Knowledge

There have been times when I have felt fragile. I sometimes wished that I was more assertive; more committed to a career; more able to stand on my own two feet. I have at times resented my nature, seeing it as somehow less than those who appeared so strong; whole; resilient.

I have come to understand matters more completely. I am resilient. I am strong. I am whole. I have in abundance compassion and the ability to love. I was given all the resources I required to endure and thrive. I did not know that then but I know that now.

To better days

Some readers may know that Australia is facing the devastating consequences of severe floods. This is a time of huge sorrow for my country; of pulling together to help those in need and of just getting through a very tough time. I imagine it has some similarity to when there was a devastating event in New York City or in New Orleans and people put their best foot forward and helped out wherever they could. Catastrophic events often bring out the best in us.

For me personally, the floods have prompted an understanding of what I hold dear. A nurturer by nature, it is my natural impulse to give care to others and as a woman who is also submissive by nature, I look to receive care. I am more than my sexuality. I am a woman who values more than anything, honest and fulfilling relationships; friendship; getting to know another person at the soul level; treating people with respect; being kind. This is where I get complete sustenance. I need freedom to express myself for all that I am.

At this time, my thoughts are with other Australians who have lost everything. Kinky thoughts seem highly inappropriate right now to my mind. Instead, I offer my positive spirit that there will be better days ahead and that together, we will rebuild shattered lives.

Doll heaven

Entering into the dolli headspace has been an extremely liberating thing for me in many ways and brought me much happiness and contentment. I understand that that is a very confronting statement for many people to read. I hope that you can be happy for me and not judge me too harshly in the same way that I don’t judge anyone else harshly for their choices. I do appreciate it is not for everyone (or hardly anyone). As well as being liberating it is very challenging and even for me at times, confusing and even baffling. I think my last post was an attempt to express some confusion – to try to put into words some thoughts that were troubling me a little. On reflection, I don’t think I did a good job of trying to express those thoughts.

When something doesn’t sit right for me in my life I deal with this in one of two ways. Either I give my poor addled head a complete rest and go do something that absorbs my mind and body in other ways or else I immerse myself in my troubled thoughts and don’t let go of them until I have a solution. You, my poor readers have suffered so as I go about demanding a solution and I want to thank you for your perseverance. I know (well I’ve been told anyway) that I can be a tad intense.

The benefits of the dolli headspace for me are immense. I can feel a wonderful sense of satisfaction with life and with my place in it. I can have a tremendously strong bond with my husband and we can both flourish with all the play that abounds in our life. I can benefit from the structure and expectations and even the communication style can be very rewarding. On my best days, I am quite simply, the doll. I am not just the dolli in the bedroom or when my husband approaches me in the kitchen in a certain way but I am also the dolli in my interactions in the outside world. She talks in a certain way. She interacts in a certain way. She abounds joy and transfers joy in a certain way. I can feel her taking over bringing me peace and contentment and I give thanks for the day, eighteen months ago now when she rose up and refused to be put back down.

Of course, the dolli operates in a confined space in many ways. She is contained and when that containment becomes too easy, she is challenged yet again. Dollies need challenges; to be pushed and pulled. Nothing is surer.

At the same time, I am old enough and wise enough to understand that the most important aspect of my life is my relationships. All sorts of other things have importance but nothing means more to me than connecting with other people. Finding soul mates, having one on one conversations with other people whereby they feel safe to reveal themselves to me and I feel safe to reveal myself to them is what matters to me.

I remind myself regularly that there are many types of friendship. I have a friend and we’ve been friends since we began nursery school at the age of four. We’ve never had an argument but at the same time I’ve never felt that I could talk to her about the real me. I sometimes wonder if she can talk to me about the real her. The truth is, I believe, that what I see, I get. I am seeing the real her whereas it is I that am the secretive one. It will never come to pass that I tell her about all that I tell you, because that sort of exposure would put me at great risk. It would be too titillating. The temptation to tell mutual friends would be too high. And, I say this holding onto a secret of hers through the years. I can do that perfectly well but many people cannot.

I crave intimacy. I don’t mean sexual intimacy although I do crave that big time with my husband. I crave intimacy with a special few people. I hope that my special relationships evolve such that intimacy, and then even more intimacy abounds. I look to meet soul to soul. I put great stock in this; work towards this; hope. You cannot make anyone open up but you can provide the environment that enables them to open up to you, if they wish; if they feel safe.

There are moments when I worry that as the doll I won’t have the opportunity to experience this sort of intimacy. Dollies have so many rules and protocols; so many limits. They are so contained. Yet, in my more positive moments I can see quite clearly that it is entirely possible to achieve intimacy; to meet with someone else on a soul to soul basis; for the trust to operate on a two way basis. This outcome is what I call ‘doll heaven’.

Profile of Lily: a masochist

I was walking my puppies at the park when a girl I shall call Lily engaged me in conversation. At first it was all about the dogs and we chatted amiably, but she flitted from one subject to another and dispersed into the conversation enough of her opinions for me to know from the outset that she had some eccentricity or other. I don’t always enjoy eccentricity in conversations with strangers any more than I enjoy receiving phone calls from strangers trying to tell me that I am the winner of a holiday package, but I felt not the least unease as I spoke to her. Rather than making excuses that I needed to get moving, I found her rather fascinating and was keen to know more about her.

She moved through a variety of topics and her own personal life story at enormous speed and in the course of thirty minutes I knew a great deal about her. Her father was an alcoholic who drank himself to death. Although she didn’t say so specifically, he must have been a mean drunk because apparently he told her constantly that he hated her. She had wanted to be an actress but she thought that perhaps she lacked the confidence to follow through with that desire due to the messages she received as a girl. It was the one and only time during our conversation that she expressed any regret or self-pity, or any sense at all that she was looking backwards and not forwards.

There was considerable mental illness on one side with her grandparents. One grandfather tried to take his life many times and her sister tried to take her life nine times, although she is relatively stable now “compared to what she was”. She feels fortunate to have the genes of the other grandparents who were creative and resilient. To generalize, she said that her family was quite “mad”. It was not a complaint. It was a statement of fact.

She told me that she had been an art and drama teacher but that state government policies had closed down half the art, drama and media courses in public schools at the time of her graduation (she is right) and that most of her contemporaries never worked in the profession for which they had been trained. She did procure a job at a local secondary school but the Principal and Vice Principal had been having an affair for years, the school was in chaos and the “bastard” made sure that she didn’t get her job back in the new academic year. (New teachers are often employed here year by year, with no certainty of what the next academic year will bring.)

She’s done other jobs, not focussing at all on money but rather looking for “experiences”. She worked in a prison for a time conducting an art and drama course for the inmates and she started up an after school care program at a school where those children could be involved in art and drama at least in an after school capacity. I suspect that she has considerable creative talent and great flair when working with other people, especially children but that her difficulties with order and with keeping up with the paperwork required for such jobs meant that people could feel she was not performing as required. Although she was wholly responsible for the only dog that she was walking for payment, she rarely checked to see that he was still there. To be fair, the dog chose to be by her side the vast majority of the time.

From what I could make of it, right now she is just walking the dogs for her income although she may sell some paintings. She referred to herself as both a writer and an artist. There was no question she was very articulate and well read, with a strong interest in film (her major), although she had no interest in print or television media whatsoever seeing it as mere manipulation, untruthful and unworthy of her time.

Most of all, Lily likes to move, to walk, to be outside and to engage in conversation with others. She said that she could tell right away that I wasn’t put off by anything she had to say and this prompted her to go on. She said that was rather unusual. She loved going back to study as a mature age student although she admits she “starved” to do so and her family were completely unsupportive of this initiative.

She was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) at the age of 44 but I strongly suspect she means ADHD since she has clearly been very hyperactive. She seems less the kind of person that would get lost day dreaming in a classroom as she would be in trouble for expressing herself inappropriately. In fact, she said social situations have been difficult since she would interrupt people when they were speaking and not realize that it really bothered them.

Lily has been all over the city looking for help for many years. She said that even psychiatrists at the top of their profession had been unable to help her until one day she looked up the yellow pages phone book and decided to make an appointment at the medical centre where I happen to go. In fact, she found herself sitting in front of my doctor. She couldn’t remember his surname at the time but she knew his Christian name and I volunteered his surname. She was gobsmacked that we should share the same doctor but as soon as she had began to speak of what a wonderful doctor she now had and how he had saved her life, I knew of whom she spoke.

Chris is a man who has made it his business to understand various neurological conditions, most especially ADD/ADHD and somehow or others the gods have sent many troubled people his way to be helped. We have spoken of it often for various reasons not to mention that there have been incidences where we needed to stop what we were doing whilst he took a call from some institution that was holding a patient of his who had asked them to ring him. He would politely tell the caller he had made great strides with the person they were holding, to please advise him when his patient was to be released and to tell him or her to come and see him then; that together they would sort it out.

Chris sent Lily off to a psychiatrist and had her assessed so that he could prescribe suitable medication, gave her the titles of books to read, the names of people who could assist her with setting up positive thinking modes and order in her life. They get together to review regularly. She told me that a great many things had fallen into place in her life. She now realized why she had behaved as she had all her life and she was able to articulate her personal characteristics with great clarity. She said that ADD people are not just anxious at times of great stress, but they are anxious a good deal of the time. Whereas most people walk into a room and wonder for what purpose they did so every now and again, this kind of distractive behaviour occurs to her all the time.

Being a girl with ADD was especially difficult she thought, because she can’t do what girls are expected to do: to keep the house neat and tidy. ADD people can’t stand to be bored, requiring constant stimulation of their frontal lobes to feel good and so doing things that are boring to them is like water torture. They hypo focus, she said, and so become immersed in projects wanting to know everything about a subject of interest. Often, what needed to get done was put aside for other pursuits that were more compelling.

She felt proud of herself that she hadn’t given up and had the tenacity and the resilience to go on. In fact, she clearly loved life, lived alone in an apartment that was expensive for her but she was paying her way , rode her bike everywhere, loved animals and nature and most of all, she loved talking to people. She talked in detail about internal pain and how people can feel desperate to do anything to stop the pain; that her sister discovered the strategy of self-harm to avoid pain by chance. A mirror broke and shattered and she discovered that a shard of glass that cut her skin had helped. However, she expressed disdain for people who took their life if it involved other people. If they wanted to take their lives that was all right but if they decided to jump in front of a train and destroy the life of a train driver who got to relive the images all his days, then that was very wrong.

She offered all this information very freely. There was no need for me to tell her anything about myself at all and since I remained interested in what she had to say, I only needed to agree, to nod, to express interest or to ask for clarification and that kept the conversation moving on. There came a moment when she wanted to tell me something that she considered “private” and her pace slowed somewhat and her voice dropped.

“This is rather private, but, you know, my father was a sadist and perhaps because of that and the way he treated me, I am attracted to sadists. I identify as a masochist.”

I gave nothing away. I merely nodded in acknowledgment. Eventually, we began to walk and talk on our way out of the park with the dogs and she asked me what star sign I was and I told her that I was a Scorpio. She felt sure that I was, she told me and she proceeded to tell me all about myself. I don’t give hardly anything away on the surface but underneath I feel very deeply and have great empathy for people. I am very curious. I care a lot about people.

“I’m Lilly, by the way.”

“Vesta.”

“Well, it has been wonderful talking to you, Vesta. I am so happy to meet you.”

“It has been wonderful to meet you too Lily. Do you come to this park regularly?”

“Nearly every day.”

“Then, we shall see one again.”

We said our goodbyes and my head was full of what this amazing woman could achieve if we could only get it (and her) organized. We had spoken of the need for educators to understand conditions such as ADD so that students could be better cared for and have better outcomes and I suggested that she would be an ideal person to talk to groups of students about her life and what had helped her. She agreed she would love to do that and had considered it, but of course whether the education department would fund it so that she had an income from the work is another matter.

Lily is articulate, engaging, bright and well versed in conditions that have made life a challenge for her and her family. It is the sort of story that could turn life around for many students who would connect with what she had to say in ways particular to them.

When I told my husband about her my main concern was that she was so vulnerable to sadists who would simply use her and spit her out for her submissive state of mind and I admit I have a desire to shelter her from harm. In the hands of a caring, attentive and loving sadist, I really think she could shine.

Words

My husband was having a telephone conversation with his sister this morning. It wasn't about me but about something I needed to do and he was trying to protect me. I heard him say, "Look, she is as soft as butter and I'm not going to have her go through this again..."

My sister-in-law, who can be as kind as she can be cruel was having none of it and her sensibilities were offended, as they so often are, until she said something so awful and so vicious, I'm sure we will forgive, but we'll be unlikely to forget. Although she considers herself a 'Christian' it does nothing to assuage her sense of righteousness and indignation if people have a different view to hers. Her sense of self means that she must lash out when feeling at all anxious and it takes quite a bit of sensitivity on the other person's part to want to hang around and accept the assault.

What she in fact did was say the most hurtful and confronting thing she could to her brother - the statement that would offend him the most; the statement that would rile him and challenge his ability to stay calm with her. And, when she said that, she knew full well what the result of saying it would be.

My husband has a dominant character. When he makes a call he means to be heard - not necessarily to get his way but for there to be resolution of a situation. He is more than willing to negotiate and sort things out. His sister, knowing full well that he can be forceful and direct when not happy about something tends, nearly always, to go on the attack. This has them at loggerheads and most particularly when she turned viciously against their sister and he had to mediate on her behalf. His sense of how to treat a family member would not allow the behaviour to stand.

One the great outcomes of my mentoring - a mentoring that involves words and words alone - is that I have had excellent practice in paying attention to my words. Like my sister-in-law, I have been guilty of allowing my emotions to run and take me over. I have felt anger and instead of slowing down and working through that fact (oh yeah, there's that false ego controlling me again) I've let the words fly on email. It isn't nice and it isn't good. In fact, it was very wrong.

The truth is that things done in anger are invariably done badly and often with false 'facts'. It is no co-incidence I think that when I act in anger, minutes, hours or days later, I am apologizing. What does that tell you? The last time it happened, I was called on it. It caused a breach between us and we both suffered for that. We've made a wonderful team and my false ego put a blot on that.

I do feel that I have grown a great deal as a person over the past year in many ways and it is what makes me continue to challenge myself in this space. We all use words like 'trust' and 'communication' and recognize the importance of these words, but it is perhaps not until there is a breach of trust or communication that we fully understand the huge significance of those words in a power exchange. Communication is vital and trust is paramount. I failed on both counts.

I've talked privately, and somewhat publicly here, I think, that I do well about 98% of the time, and isn't that good enough?! But, it is not and I know that now. We need to put thought into our words; not just bleed onto the page. We need to consider what impact those words will have on the person receiving those words. It has been a salutary lesson.

I've taken a few days here in my everyday life to slow myself right down - to really absorb the importance of words in communication and most especially in terms of the power exchange. And, I rather doubt I'll make this mistake again. It was a lack of faith that implied a desire to control. And, that is what perturbed him the most - my persistence at seizing control at the very same time as I strive to relinquish it.

My words about ego (the last post) are pertinent here and I feel more self-assured to carry on with my goals. The extraordinary thing is that, I believe, the more self assured and self realized one is - the more one can snuff off that false ego and just connect with the self -the more one can relinquish the desire for control.

My goal has always been to seek the divine - that sense of complete peace and harmony in life - and I feel closer to it with each step. This is what it is about for me.

Gran Torino

We watched ‘Gran Torino’ last night. Perhaps it’s just me, but I found myself thinking about the movie this morning in the light of what I know of dominant men and submissive women.



At one point, Walt (Clint Eastwood) says that his wife, recently deceased, was the best wife a man could ever have. I would have liked to see some evidence of that; some way of demonstrating his loss other than his anger. The anger was there from the very first frame of the movie, at the funeral, and it confused me. Is that really the only emotion one would feel on that day, of all days?



No, I’m sure Walt was feeling a great many things on that day, but to the outside world, it was just expressed as anger. Certainly, we see at the time of his ‘confession’, late in the movie, that he has tried his best in life to live up to his own creed of honesty and doing the right thing. He certainly ‘dominates’ his landscape.



So, just how then, did Eastwood, who produced and directed this movie, translate to his audience that this man had compassion? We saw the compassion in spades, eventually, when he paid the ultimate price for his ‘neighbours’ with whom he came to feel closer than his own sons. But, why do we care about this grumpy old man before we begin to see him being won over with kindness?



Well, I think it is Daisy; his dog. Daisy is his girl. She’s a good girl. She stays close by him. She’s loyal and true, and in turn he is good to her. When there is no one else, there is Daisy. She rides with him in the truck, she sits by him when he sits on his chair on the porch, and she keeps a close eye on him, not leaving his side, even when he takes a bath.



I don’t remember the line exactly. But, when we see Walt lying in the bath, having a cigarette, we know it is out of character. Smoking in the bath? Eastwood gives us a second or two to absorb the inconsistency, and then he says something like,


“Don’t look at me that way, girl. Give me a break! It’s the first time a man has ever smoked in his own house.”


And, instantly we know two things.


1) We know that we have come to understand Walt. He’s let us into his world and he can’t fool us. We care about this man, whether he likes it or not.


2) Walt may be a dominant man, with a submissive girl, but she has some power over him, too. Just a look can change his mind set, have him justifying himself. He dominates her, cares for her and loves her. And, she, by simply being that good, loyal, submissive girl affects him, and everything that he does.


And, in that moment when he speaks to the dog, we come to understand what Walt would have been like as a husband, and the loss he has endured. We learn about that through Daisy.


He’s such an extraordinary actor; a producer and director of such remarkable talent. As the ‘Gran Torino’ drives away along the highway in the final shot of the movie, I wondered if we were seeing Eastwood drive away, too. It has to be his final project, doesn’t it?


If it is, he has left with great style. And, how appropriate that the ‘Gran Torino’ should be left to Thao! And, of course, that Daisy should be riding right up there beside him.