Green-Screening Your Life

This morning I texted good friends a photo of us from our snowshoeing adventure on the flanks of Mt. Hood. It was a glorious Pacific NW day, with brilliant blue skies, blazing sunshine, and Wy-East, as he is known to our Native American sisters and brothers, was out in all his glory. It was the kind of day that takes your breath away and reminds you of how amazing it is to be alive, and I wanted to share it.

Almost immediately a text came zooming back.

That’s some impressive green screen work... 😂

It made me laugh out loud.

But you know…he has a point.

It can be hard to tell real from fiction when it comes to what our lives actually look like. It is tempting to put ourselves in the best light possible, not wanting others to see our private struggles. We can carefully curate our lives with a backdrop that displays only that which is Instagram worthy, fearing what others might think if they saw the unfiltered truth of our everyday lives.

I’m not talking about disclosing in public spaces that which is in need of safe haven. There is way too much of that for anyone’s good. What I am advocating is that we find our people. Those with whom we can show up raw and uncensored, and speak our unfiltered truth. People who love us not in spite of our scars and imperfections, but at least in part, because of them. In other words, we need friends who can smell our green screen bullshit a mile away and gently, but firmly, call us on it. Because if I can’t tell you the real story of my life, then you might not tell me yours, and if we can’t see ourselves in one another’s stories, then where can we?

As tempted as I am with every passing year to use one of those nifty little apps that smoothe away my hard-earned lines and wrinkles, I sent this one off as is. What was great about this little text exchange today is that it came from a friend who already knows the real-meal-deal of who I am and what I struggle with. I guess you might call it the kind of friendship that is picture post card worthy. No green screen required.

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Word Of The Day: RESILIENT 2.0

Over the next few weeks I will be focusing on a word of the day drawn from a list created at the beginning of January. Each word was chosen to serve as a guide to inspire and inform my steps through 2020. If you are just joining me now and want to look in on earlier posts on this topic, you will find links to each at the end.

Good writing, but a little too “self congratulatory” was my husband’s response after reading RESILIENT. In it I told the story of summiting and surviving an unexpected night on Mt. Adams. Tom is one of my most trusted feedback providers, and as such I work to listen with more curiosity than defensiveness. Always a growing edge for me.

This morning over coffee in the pre-dawn light, defensiveness won the first round. As a female, I was raised to keep my strengths, intelligence, and strong opinions under wraps. His comments about the tone of my post smacked of that early upbringing. He was told from his earliest years never to toot his own horn, and the tenor of my words sounded like boasting. Our morning heart-to-heart was a convergence of our early messaging. Curiosity eventually won the match, and our conversation evolved into all of the ways resilience can manifest in our lives, including the willingness to receive and reflect on feedback when it is of the more “constructive” nature.

Divorce, death of loved ones, financial hardship, broken trust, the loss of a job, unrealized dreams, failure in front of our peers, being passed over for a promotion, fighting injustice, crafting meaningful lives, taking on our own inner demons, fostering authentic relationships, strenuous exercise, living with debilitating health conditions, or the Seattle Seahawks losing a game they fought relentlessly to win. We are all daily surrounded with opportunities to practice being resilient. Some small, some large, and some that feel insurmountable. When we practice being resilient in the face of the small, the more equipped we are for the large, which is what readies us when faced with the seemingly insurmountable.

Onward.

(And for the recored, I am pretty damn proud of summiting and surviving an unexpected night on a mountain. Just sayin’)

Photo by Suliman Sallehi on Pexels.com

Photo by Suliman Sallehi on Pexels.com

Being A Better Human Being

Every day there are so many opportunities to practice being a better human being. Or at least there are for me. Most of the time those opportunities come in the form of other human beings. Take today for instance. Thanks to my interactions with others, I’ve had the chance to apologize, circle back, gain clarity, have a go at a better conversation, listen more deeply, bear witness to pain, express appreciation, catch myself before really making a mess of things, not catch myself and have to clean up the mess, and last but not least, have a good laugh at myself for how far I still have to go.

Such life lessons don’t happen in a vacuum. They only happen when we are in relationship with others. Sometimes those others push our buttons, and bingo, there is another chance to practice being a better human being. Other times we push their buttons, and bingo. Another chance to practice being a better human being. When they hold up a mirror for us to see when we aren’t being a better human being, bingo… I think you catch my drift.

As we all know, or should know by now, when things are good, it usually has a lot to do with people and relationships. When things go bad, it usually has a lot to do with people and relationships. And of course, when things get ugly, it usually has a lot to do with people and relationships. One thing I know for sure is that I want to help tip the scales for the good, rather than the bad or the ugly. Lucky for me, every day is filled with new opportunities to practice.

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