My Ugly Little Secret Exposed By an Ad in an Outdated Magazine!

I drew this guy a number of years ago. Turns out
he is a personal archetype since his expression
fits a number of different emotions and I have
used him repeatedly in various artworks. He's taught
me a lot about myself and the human condition over
 the years. The original was a charcoal drawing
which I used in a mixed media collage.

I was at my eye doctor appointment. The assistant had just put those numbing eye drops in my eyes and I had 10 minutes to do something with, so I grabbed a three year old magazine to look through to occupy my waiting time. As I was thumbing through the pages I ran across an ad for what looked to be a reading app for e-readers. I don't remember the exact lead line except that it had to do with binge reading becoming the new thing. It made me laugh. And then, the light bulb flashed on in my mind!

I recognized that I am a binge reader and have been for many years. In fact, I am currently on a reading binge—just finished re-reading Clan of the Cave Bear and am halfway through The Valley of Horses, both by Jean M. Auel. I have known that I often read as a form of escapism, but when did it become bingeing?

Looking back over the years I recognized that I have had these reading binges scattered throughout my life. Escapism is something we all do from time to time and has some very positive connotations, however, when it becomes something that is difficult to control and interferes with taking care of normal everyday functions that we all need to carry out, then something is out of balance. On some level I had already recognized this imbalance that was exacerbated by depression from a long winter, but had not put the pieces of the puzzle together. Putting the label of 'bingeing' on my out-of-control reading habits suddenly catapulted me into a whole different perspective. I discovered that over the years I have taken occasional escapist reading and turned it into binge reading that feeds the procrastination I frequently fall into. Ouch!

The truth be told, I have been bingeing in different areas all through my life, not recognizing that bingeing applies to so much more than just food. I binge when doing art or writing, sometimes when consuming alcohol or smoking cigarettes, when dieting or exercising, and even when cleaning or rearranging the house. OMG! Who knew?! Where does escapism or even passion and enthusiam for something turn into bingeing? Yikes!

Is spring cleaning a form of bingeing? Is gardening? Or lawn manicuring? Or any other hobby? Can you binge on religion, family, work, pleasure? And what about thinking? Is it possible to binge think? Is that what "overthinking" is? Can abstinence also become a binge thing? When and how did all of this bingeing take over my life? How did I get so out of control? And just as important, what do I now do with this unwanted information?

I like reading and art and writing and spring cleaning. I study everything from anthropology to applied psychology and neuro-psychology to cell biology (thanks to my tenth grade biology teacher, Mr. Wilson, by the way) to quantum physics. I'm interested in emotional intelligence, culture and sociology, suffering, and the cyclic nature of life along with all that escapist reading I do. That's only a partial interest list. I have a real 'liberal arts' mentality when it comes to learning, which is my true life's passion. I am so glad that anything and everything falls into the purview of the school of life. Curiosity and creativity are divine gifts no matter what area we apply them to.

Maybe the answer to all of this, if there is one, is finding and pursuing balance in all things, which I find is often easier said than done. It helps to remember that life is highly complex and, despite all our advanced knowledge, it is still a mystery, and don't we all love a good mystery? Life really is a journey made up of a plethora of processes, where balance is a fluid thing by nature and necessity, and there is a time and season for everything under the sun. It also helps to realize that life isn't all about the answers. As often as not, life is about the questions. Did you know that doing a search on questions at Amazon brings up 101 pages of books on the subject of questions? That's a lot of books! How in the world will I ever find the time?

Pendulums swing widely at first on their journey to balance, affected by outside influences, many over which we have little to no control. We are the pendulum in our lives always coming back to a state of equilibrium, at least that's my understanding of physics at its most basic level. Everything is energy which is neither created nor destroyed, merely changing form like water going from solid to liquid to gaseous depending upon outside circumstances.

In writing this article, I hope I have caused you to be aware of and spend some of your precious time exploring the mystery of bingeing, of how it does or doesn't apply to you. Maybe, having experienced it myself and sharing my current understanding with you, I can justify all that bingeing I've been doing over the years, putting a more positive spin on it, turning my negative into a positive. I believe that is called making the best of something, but it could just be rationalizing....

 Either way, it is all going to be okay in the end. I truly believe that.

Phew!! I really needed to hear that. Maybe you did, too.

Feel free to comment below.

Coming Out of the Closet of Fear

Coming Out, Mixed Media, 10.875" x 13.75"

I ran across a video on YouTube the other day of Ash Beckham speaking at a TED talk in Boulder, CO, that inspired the artwork for this week's blog.

Ash said this:

I'm going to talk to you tonight about coming out of the closet. And not in the traditional sense, not the gay closet. I think we all have closets. Your closet may be telling someone you love her for the first time. Or telling someone that your pregnant. Or telling someone you have cancer. Or any other of the hard conversations we have throughout our lives. All a closet is is a hard conversation. Although our topics may vary tremendously, the experience of being in and coming out of the closet is universal. It is scary and we hate it and it needs to be done. 

 

 My interpretation of that talk is that all closets of the mind are closets of fear. In my mind's eye I saw a closet with a partially open door and someone peeking out of the darkness, building up the courage to step out--a profound and difficult place to be in any hard situation.

I believe we all need to give ourselves a well-deserved pat on the back for every time we open the closet door in our mind, stepping out in an act of vulnerability and brave courageousness. We are brave. We are courageous. And we need to recognize that about ourselves.

Daring To Be Vulnerable

Vulnerabilty, Mixed media collage, 11"x14"

 

 

"To be alive is to be vulnerable."

- Madeleine L’Engle

 

"No matter what gets done and how much

is left undone, I am enough…Yes,

I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but

 that doesn’t change the truth that I am also brave

and worthy of love and belonging."

- Brené Brown

 

To embrace our vulnerability is the ultimate "daring greatly."

Asking the Right Questions

I truly believe that one of the most important keys in life is learning to ask the right questions. When I run across one of those 'questions' somewhere, they are like a solid brick wall stopping me abruptly in my path. I had one of those experiences today on Facebook.

A picture posted by Sketches in Stillness posed the following question:

Do you consider yourself a problem to be fixed...Or can you allow yourself to be exactly as you are right now, in peace, without believing in your stressful thoughts?

This was one of those "seeing what you really believe about yourself" moments for me. I realized that is exactly how I see myself and this belief directs a large portion of my life.

So then, the question for me becomes where's the balance between recognizing that you need improvement in some area and pursuing that purposefully and diligently, and, pushing yourself to change to the point that the stress you cause yourself becomes harmful to you physically, mentally, and emotionally?

And how does that affect what you believe others think of you or how they 'see' you, thereby causing you to act in ways that may not be good for you or anyone else? In other words, if anyone sees theirself as broken and needing to be fixed, they usually automatically assume that others see them the same way. We tend to think that others think the same way we do, although experience often proves that assumption to be false. That's just one of those traits that all of humanity shares.

How far do I believe that I differ from 'normal' or 'average'? And where am I getting my definition of those terms?

Most of us don't really know what we believe deep down inside and would be hard-pressed to define those beliefs if we had to. More often than not, our actions don't line up with what we say we believe, for if they did, we wouldn't struggle so within ourselves. It wouldn't be so hard to change habits, most of which we don't even recognize as habits in the first place. Usually we just think 'that's the way I've always done it,' or 'that's the way I was taught', or that's how my parents did it.' Or we fool ourselves into thinking we do things the way we do because that's just what we want to do.

It's too much work, and often too fearful or painful, to face the person within. We're afraid we won't like the person within, and most times that really is the truth. Truly not liking yourself, or hating yourself, is the ultimate rejection, a very scary place to be.

I have knowingly been close enough to that place to know I don't want to go there again, which brings me back to the original question of whether I see myself as a problem to be fixed. Maybe the emotional impact of that experience is what has made that question so real to me. And that is not necessarily a negative thing.

Obviously, the answers to these questions will be unique for each person as we are all individuals with different experiences, etc. But I wonder how many others are so affected by this question? I'm sure I'll never know but that doesn't stop me from wondering. It's the philosophical part of my nature I think.

What is a question that has truly impacted your life? I would love to hear from you.

A Change of Heart



Mother is dying. I can't stop it. She can't stop it. And neither can the doctors. Short of a miracle from the Lord, soon she will be gone from this physical world.



Photo by Susan Leslie



It seems the majority of people with cancer linger. That is, they die slowly, bit by bit. My dad died almost instantly of an aneuryism sixteen years ago, and I've often asked the Lord to let me die quickly like that, especially since going through this journey of being mom's 'caregiver' through the last year and a half. It's been a very painful time on so many levels for both of us. I've thought of my own children possibly having to go through something similar with me down the road and it tears my heart apart.

But recently I've had a change of heart.

I would never have understood what I now know without having gone through the last eighteen plus months. The situation has caused me to examine my thinking and my way of doing things and make some much needed changes. The emotional upheaval we have both experienced at times has been shockingly horrible and scary, but without this time and opportunity to work things through, neither one of us would be at the place of peace in which we now find ourselves. We have finally, after all these years, become comfortable with one another. What a precious gift from the Lord! But for the grace of God.

All of this is a reminder that no matter how awful or terrible, how frighteningly scary and out of control a situation may be to us, or how blind we may be to everything but what we are currently going through, the Lord is unceasingly, lovingly at work in the background making all things work together for our good. When we enter into that place of rest in the here and now, we see death for what it is—a temporary rite of passage that moves us from the temporal to the eternal, reminding us that the sting of death truly is swallowed up in victory. Death becomes merely a doorway into that place of continued, eternal, sweet rest in the arms of our Lord. And therein lies our hope.