When to Stop and Breathe

Moments approaching exhaustion we suddenly discover we’re not as invincible as we thought we were, or wish we could be. Too many have gone to the brink of burnout only to find they lost sight of their limits; too early did that limit come, even though, tantalisingly, our limits are far above where we initially think they are.

As a young man I was an avid bodybuilder. I was constantly amazed at how durable my body was in responding to training. It seemed I could push it harder and harder; it would respond every time. Continually the weights I could move were heavier, and I could move them for more and more repetitions. Then, without warning—a warning that was always there, in retrospect—the camel’s back broke. I developed lower lumbar tendinitis—my back felt crippled. I was then severely limited in the type of training I could do. Physically, I had burned out.

I had to re-learn how to train according to my reasonable limits.

It’s no different in life, especially as a busy working person with family, perhaps children, and even elderly parents to look after. Many others have extracurricular activities, like study. With many cares and responsibilities, we need self-care all the more.

When And How To Stop

The trouble with busy life is knowing when and how to stop. What sounds remarkably simple becomes confounding in its complexity. Stopping is hard to start. Making a habit of stopping, at the appropriate times, is a life skill few master with consistent dexterity.

Well, so much for the problem. What about the solution?

Where’s Assertiveness When We Need It

Assertiveness is not merely a skill for relationships; it’s a self-accounting measure of discipline ensuring we accurately assess, in this case, our limits, and institute delineable boundaries that provide for our constancy of wellbeing.

This thing of assertiveness is otherwise named ‘wisdom’—the achievement of the foreseeable balance that enables effectiveness to be redeemed to its reasonable maximum, and nothing more.

It’s assertiveness, in this context, that compels us to stop and to breathe.

Taking the Opportunity While We Have It

Opportunities come and go and more dynamically than we think. We know this by the countless opportunities we’ve missed.

The minute of rest, which is just enough time to gain some sorely needed cognitive perspective, can save us. The hour taken to roam the wilderness is unquantifiable bliss. The day taken in escape from our world, call it a mental health day, is reviving us from the middle. Then there’s the thing we stop altogether... for peace.

These times we just breathe; we rest in any manner of rest that’s meaningful.

***

Mastering the art of rest, knowing when to breathe, and to escape this fractious world, is immense freedom. Having the courageous assertiveness to do it is power. Enjoying it in reflection, going out into our world from rest; that’s majestic. Only we can know what we need. Only we can act.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

What We Want in Marriage

“But I believe that there are marriages where you can have your pool table and she can have her scrapbooking room or garden or whatever it is. But when everyone has what they want, it’s not funny. There’s no conflict.”

~Brad Garrett.

There’s little quibbling about this point. Satisfy the streaming urge within the individual and there’s likely to be peace vested for the more important tasks of life. Why would we insist on frustrating the spirit of someone so dear as our partner?

Yet, we do so often because there’s a short-sighted sense of getting what we want.

Many marriages rail at this very point. There is, for some strange reason, or maybe not so strange, a rationale for gathering the thing we ‘need’, personally. These things we’re duped into thinking we cannot do without. In fact, we go there without thought; without challenge, we argue our own case. We need to be aware of it. Each, instead, could arrange room for those needs of, and for, the other.

The commonest sticking points could well be the same prattling things we were supposed to iron out in the first year or two.

The Beauty of the Better View

Better views are afforded the couple spending time identifying and quickly meeting, with good effect, these basic personal needs. Whatever’s important to them needs to be the thing that’s important to us. There has to be sufficient space containing the marriage in order that both partners have salubrious room for individual expression, and mutual appreciation if nothing more than for freedom.

Barriers to ordinary happiness are more than barriers to survival; they impel us toward a dearth of living experience where the heart shrinks and the spirit is contrived beyond its natural, comfortable self. The very institution that was supposed to actualise us—each partner, and the couple as a whole—has failed us, or we failed it.

Once we get the ordinary things out of the way, our individual and collective perspectives open; a marvellous—mutually inclusive—vista becomes apparent.

There’s no reason not to dream; every married person of a good mind, surely, wants the best for themselves, their partner, and the unity of their marriage.

A vision to believe in: of mutual acceptance and the gracious provision of freedom.

An image: We sit together on the park bench of life happily content with existence, and with each other, as we’re both personally disposed and within our togetherness.

***

Until the time of mutual acceptance within the scope of our individual frames of reference and activity there’s always the unpredictable threat of unwelcome conflict. The marriage is never safe.

Strive for the better view.

If we can, together, meet the basic things, the grand things of married life come then into view. Meet those needs, for they’re easy to pinpoint and satisfy. Then go on to what God ordains that which marriage could be like.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Why So Needy?

There are days like this: particularly needy days.

Needy days are those times when we reach out, in reflection too far, and in reflection we’re embarrassed and annoyed with ourselves about such overtures of glee, fancy, trying too hard, or nervous delight. As we look back we see how out of place our behaviour seemed; possibly only to us.

Our neediness may or may not be an issue for others, but it’s definitely an issue for ourselves; something we’ll want to address, even suppress. But suppressing something so close to what constitutes a soul weakness, an ever present personality struggle, won’t do us any favours.

No, we’re better for identifying our neediness, identifying with it, and doing whatever we can to address it—but we shouldn’t deny it.

Manifestations Of Neediness

My personal neediness comes out, predictably enough, in a written form most often; e-mails are a classic medium. And because I’m mildly extroverted I tend to share my feelings spontaneously, even more than I’m later comfortable with. It’s no good for me to despise myself for making the same mistakes; they’re minor mistakes in any event.

We all have a certain sense of neediness.

Manifestations of neediness come in myriad form, from trying extra hard to please a partner or peers at work, to analysing others’ behaviour in connection with our own, or to requiring recognition. None of this neediness is altogether unusual. It’s actually normal to want to please people when we can, understand others’ behaviour in connection with our own, and to desire healthy recognition. Neediness just takes things a little too far, revealing self-esteem issues for us. Yet, we all have our needy days.

Determining Our Pattern Of Neediness

We may be permissively needy if it’s only a day here or an hour there where our self-esteem reveals us as overly anxious within. Sure, we’d prefer never to feel this way. But the reality is we will all suffer some mode of needy feeling which translates into needy behaviour.

Determining the pattern and the frequency of our neediness is something we can become increasingly aware of. When we do pick ourselves up, hopefully quicker and quicker, we can begin to ask the question, why.

Why are we feeling so needy? That simple question, honestly enquired upon, can generate a world of learning that would empower us for a more secure future.

***

Neediness is no great crime, though it does cause us embarrassment and annoyance. Becoming less needy is a matter of awareness. We’re all needy persons deep inside. Better now to own those needs, and supply them in a healthy way.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Getting Unstuck Emotionally

Sometimes we reach out and at other times we draw back into ourselves; the trouble comes when we find ourselves all reached out or all drawn in—to the point where we cannot re-establish our centred spiritual or emotional shape.

Whenever this happens it’s usually a surprise. Our emotional response has us swimming, panicked and fretting, without sight of hard ground to land on. Sometimes it occurs in planning for a moment we’d rather avoid. Other times it comes as a result of a reflection: “Just why did I respond that way?”

However it comes, getting unstuck from moments we’re stuck in is a vital exercise in resilience. The healthiest of people find resilience as a habit.

Accepting The Flowing Subtleties Of Life

The way out of being stuck can be the opposite of what we think. Sometimes the harder we try the worse things get. We may achieve more success regarding contentedness when we accept the flowing subtleties of life that are, otherwise, impossible to predict.

Instead of attempting to perceive our response to circumstances and quickly interpret (judge) we may rest in the sea of our perceptions—letting them drift as they are.

This is a disciplined way of dealing with ourselves; ensuring we don’t make more or less of the situation than we need to.

In questioning our judgments, forcing them through the sieve of fact, we can come back to the truth. We may not know, and we may never know. Many subtleties are beyond us. We’re not meant to know.

Restoring An Invisible Balance

Besides our body language that may give us away, and this is not as telling as we think it is, though people are given to interpret incorrectly in any event, we’re islands.

Even to ourselves we’re islands; our problems from within can seem mountainous in their mystery. What we’re after is meaningful contact with ourselves. This is akin to restoring an invisible balance where we feel aligned.

Having relieved ourselves of the pressure of deciding why we are the way we are, having let that inner discord sit, we suddenly feel infinitely more at peace. No longer being against ourselves, and only doing things for ourselves, we rest. And even though it may not be instantly achievable, balance is attained.

***

We cannot help perceiving our world, and our part in it. We can help our interpretation, however. When we stop judging ourselves and our world, interpreting them through incorrect filters, we facilitate open-mindedness. Suddenly, and gloriously, we become unstuck.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Divinely Appointed Family Reconnections

We seem to live in a marvellous age, where grandchildren are no longer ‘to be seen but not heard’ and grandparents play a more active role than our Western tradition remembers. Active grandparenting, a phenomenon not so unusual in other cultures, is a blessing for the entire extended family. It’s one example of a divinely appointed family reconnection, where, in this case, sons and daughters reflect in different ways with their parents, through their children, and vice versa. It changes the frame of reference, often disarming nemeses of the past.

It can be seen in so many families that life’s imperfections dwelt never more basically than through our early experiences within the home.

Yet, many of these imperfections, whether common annoyances or instances more significant, take on a different glow within changes to the relational dynamic within families.

It’s not so much that time heals all wounds, but time affords families sufficient change in circumstances, the addition of new generations, to manage different emotional landscapes. Things don’t always remain so raw. New contexts allow for the freshening of perspective.

The Importance Of An Open Mind

Sometimes it’s the matter of surprise that takes us into acceptance of previously unacceptable familial realities. Where there had been a barrier it’s become melted because of our observation of a dynamic within the family that breaks a previous concept we had of a family member; a parent, a sibling, or one of our children.

We see them in a new light. And we may even judge ourselves for being too harsh, previously. Did they change? Or was it that we never saw this side of them?

Neither of the above questions is that relevant. What is relevant is the miracle that took place that enabled us to see them in this new, fresh way. We were surprised because we had an open mind; perhaps this was unintentional. Either way there’s less discord in our perception of them, and our relationship with them can be better as a result.

Most people can be seen as normal and fair, given vision of the challenges that their upbringing provided them. In cases of reconnection of rapport not only must we be open-minded, but open-hearted.

***

Time and new circumstances bring fresh opportunities within families. New generations breathe life into sometimes dilapidated ancestral arrangements. As people take on new roles—as parents and grandparents, for instance—we get to see them in a new dimension. Approach family with an open mind and an open heart.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Avoiding Five Great Mistakes

As an octogenarian or a nonagenarian enters their time of sunset, retaining their right mind, they perhaps have time to consider their lives. Where have they been successful, and where have they wasted good opportunities?

These, below, are five great mistakes we’re bound to make, but with time we can correct:

1. Allowing Others, Or Our Circumstances, To Upset Us

Interpersonal mastery is not about having influence, or having it over others, as much as it’s the cherished ability to live in a natural harmony with humanity in general. So many so-called mature adults, however, never learn to control the soul-bending anger created in their responses to others’ attitudes and behaviour.

This is a great mistake. It’s better by far to consider that upsets are ever-present. It’s ourselves that needs to change; our responses, not theirs, are the problem and the solution.

2. Seeking Others’ Approval

Everyone wants to be liked, it seems, especially in today’s social media world. We do so much to attract acceptance and we avoid rejection like the plague. But seeking others’ approval, and we do it in so many ways we’re unaware of, is forlorn for disappointment.

It’d be far better to do what we can in our relationships—what we should—and then throw caution to the wind. What can another person’s approval or disapproval really mean? Is it always worth the compromise? Why do we sell ourselves for a lie?

3. Failing To Master The Art Of Personal Reflection

This one is a marked travesty. To our inability to reflect comes the proportion of true wastage in life, for only in reflection is there learning, and without learning life is utterly meaningless. The purpose for life is growth—through the lifespan.

Not only that, but reflection redoubles life. If the spiritually abundant life is our quest, and it should be, only via reflection do we pack more meaning into our few years here upon this earth.

Additionally, what better motive is there in life than getting to know and accept ourselves—our truer selves? This we can never achieve ultimately, but we’re blessed to try.

4. Opting For Materialism, Any Time, Over Spiritualism

We run after many mirages. These things always have form or a shape; they’re visible, but temporal; things we can touch, but fleeting.

Far beyond anything we see are many things fundamentally more appropriate so far as the truth’s concerned. Nothing that can be bought or attained has much value at all. All humanity is in the same predicament, no matter how much we acquire.

It’s wisdom to prefer a vibrant spirituality over all the silver and gold, and status, in the world.

5. Not Understanding And Not Relating With God

The effect of this personal travesty—to not know our Higher Power—however, or whoever, we determine that to be, and infinitely better if it’s Jesus Christ—is never less significant than any other issue. All good things lead from this Divine path. This path is life.

***

Five great mistakes threaten us with the wasting of our lives. It’s far better to be beyond upsetting, not to seek others’ approval, to master the art of reflection, to opt against materialism, and, finally, to understand and know God.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Peacefully Enduring Life’s Inner Storm

Inner storms are the metaphorical bases of life when all within is a swilling soup of tremor, a jangling array of nervousness for that which is in our midst. We may present calmly, but within there is tremendous turmoil—an inner contortion of vexation.

Prayer is certainly one of the answers:

“Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.”

~Philippians 4:6-7 (Msg)

But beyond prayer is practice; practicing the practice makes it better to hold the stormy waves that crash against the rocks within us, even though such storms will never allow us to be cheerfully buoyant of spirit, without concern. Wherever we care, the output of love, we’ll risk our emotional lives within these storms.

Defining The Inner Storm

Such storms occur within interaction—those that go unexpectedly and awry. As people get angry at us, or us with them, or when frustration builds, and when there’s no time, as well as myriads of others, we’ll know the storm presenting as a psychosomatic feeling or a bundle of confusion between the ears.

The storm is personally defined, personally available at the bequest of incongruence, and we may personally regulate it. It’s created as a product of our experience and our humanity. Nobody’s inner storm is even marginally similar, at source, to the next person’s. This is why we must respect each person’s bounded anxiety; it’s ever relevant to them and, therefore, it must be to us, also, if we wish for good psychological contact.

When we would worry and fret; these are classic signs of the inner storm. The best method—the method of all methods—is via prayer to our God, that quietens the soul beyond reason, again, most inexplicable.

We hold the moment, knowing the presence of the storm intimately, maintaining contact with it in courage, and we go on doing what a more reasonable mind would instruct us to do. This takes mental, emotional and spiritual poise—a thing much practised.

Quelling The Inner Storm

We’ll battle this inner storm of ours—a thing we must own—whenever we feel at sea within ourselves. The key, obviously, is to gain congruence within ourselves and with our immediate worlds, accepting the status quo.

Quelling the inner storm is not really that at all, but it is quelling the effect of the storm. This is true courage: to live in the midst of such a storm, without much complaint, making the best of what we have. This is faith-building material. As we learn to endure our inner storms, with decent enough effect, we have more confidence for the next one and so on.

***

Facing life effectively requires managing our inner storms—to quell our worries and fretting and anxiousness. Quelling our inner storms isn’t denying them, but learning to endure them. Prayer helps. There’s no substitute, however, for practicing this faith-building practice.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

The Inherent Value of One Baby

There’s been a groundswell of emotion within me recently regarding babies, mothers, and families, pertaining to recent current affairs. The first concerns a lost or stolen generation, where mothers have been coerced into giving their babies up for adoption, creating irreconcilable grief within the mother, affected fathers, and of course the children involved—even decades on. Lives have been broken. The second issue relates to certain perverted views that newborn babies are not actually persons yet. I cannot touch the emotion within me over either issue, but I did feel compelled to search for a relevant quote:

“A baby is born with a need to be loved and never outgrows it.”

~Frank A. Clark

Preferring to work within the appreciative context, we must never forget the inherent value of one baby—one human being—one person. No matter how they’re born or how they develop, each one is perfect in the eyes of God.

What Babies Bring To Their Families And The World

We don’t have to invest much within our imaginations to understand the importance of babies—our survival depends on them. In the motion picture, Children of Men (2006), there was the hint of what it might be like to exist in a world without young people; it presented a reality of dystopia where hopelessness reigned.

Babies bring hope, but they bring ever more than that.

Just The Basic Value Of An Infant

It’s not hard to qualify the basic value of an infant. There’s one word that encapsulates the concept shrouded-of-innocence: the baby. That word is potential.

The next closest word to potential is hope; and hope should rise from within every one of us, for what else is the life force? And this life force gives us reason for existence because of the matter of love.

Babies epitomise potential; they embody hope; in them is God’s manifestation of love. Additionally, and we can easily forget this fact, we were all babies, due the fact, certainly, where we never outgrew the need to be loved. We’ll always need it.

***

The Divine design within life has been meddled with. Humanity, at its most grandiose, has been the transgressor, scientifically, socially, medically, and ethically—where families have suffered needlessly. Besides allowances for a God-anointed therapeutic function, the original intelligent design is perfect, and without need ever for change. Appreciating the matchless value of one single human life in baby form is the start, always, of something fundamentally wonderful.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Image Credit: Herald Sun.

The Folly and Power in Passion

Passion is an incredible thing. Almost no one lives without passion. But are our passions moving us along the right direction? We can sometimes be guilty of not seeing the wood for the trees. Our passions harness our energies, yet they can also control those energies. Such control doesn’t always end well.

These are a couple of good quotes to focus our attention:

“It breaks the heart of Jesus when we’re more passionate about electing politicians than evangelizing people.”

~Rick Warren (via Twitter)

“Please help repeal the R rating on ‘BULLY’. EVERYONE should be able to see it. Sign the petition...”

~Demetria Lovato (via Twitter)

Sometimes we focus too much on the government of our nations; we see injustices, through our preconceived filters and biases, and it impassions or riles us. We’re known for losing the plot on occasion. This is often manifested in anger.

Other times we don’t get passionate enough regarding some of the many issues of real injustice in our world. These are the currents of injustice that have swept through history, and will continue to repeat themselves. We, today, have an opportunity, though, to have our say—to do something real, however small.

Understanding Passion And Refining It

Our passions can be empowering or disempowering; enabling or disarming.

Passion sits on a knife’s edge. We cannot help be passionate, and therefore we’ll at times be overly zealous or, likewise, languid. With passion we’ve made a choice where our allegiances lie. Of a million things, perhaps, we’ve chosen one. And there we hammer our stake. Having made our choice, feeling fooled if we change, an admission of an earlier mistake-of-choice, pride—though it’s always the nemesis—somehow becomes our friend. Overbearing passion highlights pride.

Passion makes us prideful, unless we understand its incredible influence and decide, by the power of God, to refine it; to be alleviated from its weight. In other words, we wish to amalgamate our passion within every conscious reality. This way, our passion finds a place within our thinking without pushing out other important thoughts.

Passion And The Broader Perspective

Harnessing our passions is important in this: the more passionate we become in one area the less we’ll see of another area that’s equally important.

When we become fully divested in our passions, we do well to keep half of one eye on the broader perspective; the things we may, otherwise, be missing. Remembering that passion sits on a knife’s edge, and we’re never too far from imbalance, this broader perspective helps us abide to the prevailing truth. Our passions don’t get us into trouble as much.

***

For all the strength of passion, there are the obvious weaknesses. It’s better always, whilst being passionate, to retain our broader perspective—that which serves the real truth. Passion must be harnessed if it’s to be our ally.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Risking for Relational Closeness

“Making verbal contact is important, but the non-verbal aspects of psychological contact are more important.”

~Rose Cameron

Whether we succeed or fail in achieving rapport with the people we relate with depends a lot on the establishment of contact (closeness). Do they allow themselves their availability to be with us? Do we allow ourselves our availability to be with them? Are we personally available? Only when one makes effort and the other notices, can there be the initiation of warming activities, where hearts and minds begin to flux in semblances of togetherness.

We each need to make effort, just as it’s best if each of us is aware of the reasons for, and barriers to, contact. This contact we speak of is psychological contact; a contact essential for decent relationships.

Understanding Their Barriers

There are countless reasons why people find it hard, even impossible at times, to be completely themselves before us. Most of these reasons have nothing to do with us, yet we commonly self-attribute such barriers as rejection. Because we fear rejection most of all, we may run at an awareness of their reticence for contact.

Still, again, their reticence could be, and most often is, of their own creating, as they battle their own social demons and the demons of their thinking.

Truly understanding their barriers is more about keeping an open mind about what perplexes them in the given moment. This ignites a curiosity within us. Instead of judging them, we find ourselves interested to learn what drives their thinking and why they’re feeling the way that they are.

Their barriers may provoke thought regarding what our barriers might be; when our thought processes are complete. The mere existence of their barriers highlights that we, too, have our challenges in establishing contact.

Even More Important, Understanding Our Barriers

If we can see how other people have their barriers to contact with us, we can begin to see how our barriers prevent our contact with them.

We may be deluded in thinking ‘I have it all together’ when, realistically, our barriers to contact with other people are no less significant than theirs are. This is a freeing truth. It qualifies us as human beings, capable of thinking and feeling and developing perceptions—however warped from the truth they may be.

When we struggle to release ourselves for contact with another, we should ask ourselves why.

These are opportunities to love people. Yet, there’ll always be situations where we find it near impossible to be free enough to do that. Awareness cannot be understated. Where we’re aware of the barriers to contact we can do something about them—even if that’s simply to maintain our awareness.

***

Developing warm relationships depends on mutual psychological contact.

Being able to enjoy closeness and warmth is a matter of reducing barriers to contact. Then trust can blossom. Two people are responsible for a relationship, yet it takes just one to begin melting these barriers. Reach out and risk.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.