Standing Fast

“I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with the roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frost-work, but the solidest thing we know.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson 

It’s been one hell of a year.

Every single day when I awaken, I try to concentrate on the unexpected joys that surround radical change and practice counting the blessings that are so abundant in my life; however let’s face it, I’m a flawed human being. There are days I get mired in some of the sadness that change has imposed.

This morning in particular, I’m thinking about the unwritten guidebooks for surviving things like, being laid off from one’s job and long term unemployment, or having a marriage come to an end, or having a family member diagnosed with cancer. Specifically,  I’m wondering why there aren’t operating instructions for dealing with the loss of friends one once had, yet who drop away when life’s terrain gets bumpy and the view from the windows is less than scenic. Fair-weather friends, my mother used to call them: those who are most likely to appear when they are in need or, at best, when you are not in need. Because, let’s face it, friendship is sweeter when life is fun, right? A lot more work is required to remain present to someone who’s world has been turned on its axis.

Mind you, I’m not questioning WHY it happens. It happens for a myriad of reasons, such as:

1. People don’t know what to say or do. Keeping a safe distance allows them to watch without touching and very little extra effort is required.
2. Hard situations sometimes remind folks of their own problems - past or present - and they often don’t have the stamina for more.
3. Sometimes it’s about inability to pay attention to a story that isn’t a Hollywood action flick but a slowly unfolding real life documentary. People bore easily.
4. Folks get scared. They don’t want to admit it, but they’re afraid that if they get too close they might “catch” the problem. Like witnessing a friend’s divorce might cause one in their household, or knowing the reality and pain of cancer might cause a cell mutation in their family. Their fear takes on more meaning than their friendship.
5. They just can’t be bothered. They don’t want to take the time. They’re over it - even if their friend isn’t.

Initially, I was hurt and angry knowing that friendships were evaporating for reasons that, in my judgment (with the exception of #2) were pretty messed up and selfish. But in classic Kübler-Ross movement through the stages of grief, I’ve come to realize that what I mainly feel now is a deep sense of sadness and believe it or not, a bit of gratitude.

Relationships may be sweeter when they’re only fun, but they’re not nourishing.

As this big year of changes continues to catalyze and the guidebooks write themselves along the way, I grieve the loss of those I thought I knew, and celebrate the unwavering true.

In the long haul, I’m grateful to know and love a few well-rooted old friends as well as some amazing new ones. I am honored by these full-hearted individuals who have courageously reached out across the rough scenery and despite my grief to stand fast. Ambose Redmoon said, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” 

Choosing love is that “something else.”

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures,  have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing  and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”  ~ Henri Nouwen

The Soul Of My Boots

I held my first “real” job during the summer of 1978 in Jackson County, Oregon working for the Youth Conservation Corps which at that time was managed through our local Bureau of Land Management office.Definition of “real” to me at fifteen years old included the following characteristics: an application and interview, a dress code, a commute to work, an absolute starting time and a regular quitting time, Monday-Friday, rain or shine and a proper paycheck (though  minimum wage at that time was $2.65 an hour - so however proper it might have been, is arguable).

In a nutshell, YCC is  a National Parks Service program employing youth between 15 and 18 years old to do everything from clear invasive species, to build and repair trails, to upkeep park’s facilities like playgrounds and picnic areas, to piling and burning slash, to helping demolish old buildings. That particular summer, our main project was building the Sterling Creek trail outside of historic Jacksonville (picture scrub oak and madrone, and very dry soil conditions in the traditional 100+ degree July weather of Southern Oregon). I used tools with names like pulaski, mattock, McLeod, grub hoe, council tool and the ever popular pick axe. Almost all of them involved swinging with a fair degree of momentum and upper arm and shoulder strength, and yes - I was pretty continuously sore that entire summer.

Everyday at 5 am I would drag my grumpy teenaged butt out of bed, make a behemoth sack lunch, fill my canteen, dress in the required gear (long denim pants, long sleeved denim shirt bearing the proud green and white YCC patch, over the ankle leather boots, 3/4 length leather work gloves and a bright yellow hard hat) and walk down to the corner convenience store to be picked up by one of our crew leaders with whom I commuted from Ashland into Medford. We’d arrive at the Medford armory by 6:30 to get our daily assignments and be loaded into pale green BLM vans and on our way by 7 AM. We’d be returned eight hours later - filthy, stinking, red faced, dehydrated, famished and $21.20 richer.

Let me get one thing very clear here. I was not a soft girlie girl at fifteen. I was an athlete, a tom boy of the highest order, a wizened treehouse builder and explorer of all things dirty, muddy and imbedded in poison oak, a seasoned weed puller and gardening assistant to my parents and an avid camper. If anyone could make it in YCC, it was me. Right. After two weeks I was completely ready to throw in the towel - or trowel - or whatever. I had never worked so physically hard in my entire life. Never. Never. Never. And never mind that the 5 am thing was killing me, too! Had it not been for my boyfriend Joe’s dad, I surely would have quit. But he sat me down one evening while I was whining about the work and gave me the most wonderful and positively delivered version of the “Once a quitter always a quitter” speech that I could have ever asked for. He helped me change my mind, and I then became my own agent in changing my life.

Had I quit, in the ensuing eight weeks I would have missed out on learning to build a cross buck fence (a part of which still stands around one end of Hyatt Lake, and I can look at with pride even after 32 years). I would have missed the day we were rewarded by a trip to Crater Lake and the exhilaration I felt while running off the dock at Wizard Island and flying into the icy cold, crystal clear, aqua-colored ancient waters. I would have missed standing with my cohorts by the Sterling Creek sign that declared it was build by the YCC. I would have missed being tapped by a supervisor to spend an entire day in the field with a wildlife biologist doing bird counts and especially, tracking down and locating endangered owls in the Cascade Mountains. I would have missed the comedy of peeling off my jeans each afternoon with my gloves still on so I wouldn’t get poison oak from my britches - and the look of respect that my father gave me as I would tell him about my day. I would have missed discovering an essential part of myself - that self that doesn't just work until it’s hard, but works past the point of “hard” to “accomplished.”

Any what, pray-tell, does any of this have to do with Boot Week in the studio? Well, I was thinking last night about boots I have worn and the life I have experienced while decked out in this particular form of footwear. I kept trying to figure out, which pair of my boots do I “love” the most (aka - which life experience in boots has left an indelible mark?), when I realized - the pair I love the most are the boots I wore that long hot dust-covered summer working for YCC. When it was over, I couldn’t part with them, you see. First of all, after three months of wickedly hard wear and tear, I had worn them to a slipper comfort-like cured quality, and anyone who has ever tried to break in boots will tell you, that’s a beautiful thing for one’s feet. But mostly, they stayed with me as worn leather trophies of a job well done and my literal symbols of the proverb  “walk my talk.”

Two years ago, my elder daughter found them in a box and asked if she could wear them for hiking and service work at school. I took them out, rubbed the cracks smooth with beeswax, and passed them over to her with pride.

Quiting vs Giving Up

It was a surprise this morning to get to the bottom of the computer screen and discover that I had read not only Chris Guillebeau's entire blog "Ever Feel Like Giving Up? but also most of the ninety-four (that's right 94!) responses that people followed up with. Apparently, the theme of giving up - or hanging in - is a provoking one for many of us.

For me, "not giving up" sometimes get confused with that chiding voice of coaches past and other well intentioned adults in my childhood who would warn, "Now, don't be a quitter." Their message was certainly meant as a positive, but they never mentioned the alternative route.

Quitting doesn't necessarily equate with giving up, in fact, sometimes letting go - or walking away is the best course of action a person can choose. Done with awareness and intention, the act of quitting an unhealthy situation is a positive. Such a decision requires faith, focus, strength and, and because fear tends to be present when one "walks away," courage is essential.

Yesterday, after months of attempting to slowly take off the metaphorical band aid I've been wearing on a dysfunctional job, I went ahead and quickly yanked. (Where do we get the misguided notion that doing "hard stuff" slowly will somehow make it less difficult or less painful?) The relief was instant and measurable.

I had been feeling like "giving up" for a long, long while -- in truth, for years. I understand now, that if I ever again have those feelings in such a reoccurring and ongoing manner about a job, a relationship, or a situation that I've given time, energy and care to -- I'll examine the alternative of walking away sooner. I'm certain that in most instances, this process will be a delicate business. It's natural for us to want to "hang in" there with things we've invested ourselves in, and I'm like many other inherently hopeful people: willing to go the distance with anything - or one - that I care for or believe in. Willing even when it's no longer beneficial, or at negative cost, or simply beyond repair.

Chris and his ninety-four responders were incredibly inspirational. Many of them revealed deeply personal aspects of their struggles around the all too human urge to "give up" when things get hardest - most boring - least rewarding - loneliest - most painful. They also offered some fantastic tools that they have discovered to help them get through the urge and onto the light of morning.

Am I a quitter? No, and rarely will I "give up." Do I hang in? Yup. (Maybe sometimes longer than necessary) Can I find a balance? Yes, as I learn the art of letting go and walking away toward the positive.