Organizing and more organizing
August 21, 2009 by Juliet Chase
Filed under Juliet's Journal
I don’t think I’ve done anything this week that doesn’t fall into the category of organizing – I’ve arranged a wake, cleaned out my father’s office which had as much stuff packed into it as the rest of the house combined, and made all the telephone calls required to inform companies and the government that he had died. If nothing else, the constant repetition of the information makes it seem like it’s been more than a week.
On the flip side, never having done any of these things before I’ve learned a lot about just diving in and figuring it out as you go and what a lot I’ve learned! Aside from one or two local opportunists, everyone has been very helpful which is also a good reminder as to the true nature of the majority of humanity. It’s also possible to let laughter (the real kind) process grief and keep everything in perspective.
I’m hoping this week to fit in a little more organizing of my own work although that may be wishful thinking. Sometimes you do just have to go with the flow and let things take their course.
Perspective can be tricky
July 13, 2009 by Juliet Chase
Filed under Health and Happiness
Every few years I get myself up before dawn, pack my camera bag, and head out to the tulip fields in Skagit Valley. I don’t go every year because I don’t want it to become so repetitious that I fail to see in new ways. Even in the early hours before anything is open, there are other photographers about and people trying to avoid the traffic rush, but it’s rare to hear another voice. There is something about being in the quiet fields in the early morning that lends itself to deep thinking and slightly quirky analogies.
The scholar Joseph Campbell described three groups of people in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces :
- Those who heed a powerful inner call and slog through life’s misfortunes in pursuit of it
- “The multitude of men and women [who] choose the less adventurous way of the comparatively unconscious civic and tribal routines”
- And “those who know neither an inner call nor an outer doctrine whose plight truly is desperate”
I think it’s fair to say that the last group contributes a fair number of cases to the family court system. Too often in trying to help, we speak from a single point of reference, similar to looking down tulip rows to the horizon. There’s no getting around the fact that the curve of the earth combined with the nature of the human eye will create the optical illusion that parallel rows appear to angle towards each other to a single point on the horizon. It seems like an inevitable destination. The illusion is so powerful that even knowing this, most of us are still a little startled if we walk straight down the row into the field only to find that it doesn’t finish anywhere near the landmark that originally marked that point. A person standing ten rows away will see the rows come together at a different place although possibly with the same erroneous landmark. The reality is that each row ends in a different spot and that whatever the goal, both parties are probably going to have to step over some rows to achieve it.
I don’t know how many photographs of tulip rows marching towards that vanishing point are taken each year but it’s a lot. I can tell that because almost all of the other photographers have their cameras safely attached to a tripod at chest height. It easily could be that they are seeing something that I’m not, but I can guarantee that they aren’t seeing what I am because it’s impossible to do so from that kind of vertical and horizontal distance. Unfortunately there are a lot of photography books that imply that a tripod is what distinguishes a ‘real’ photographer from a tourist and it quickly becomes habit along with avoiding the mud (some of those unconscious civic rules Campbell referred to.) But sometimes getting your knees dirty and breaking a few of the unspoken rules can lead to a whole new perspective. Suddenly the tulips aren’t diminutive and sweet but giants reaching for the sky or an entire universe of water droplets on a single petal. In the same way, some kids need the rules of organized sports while others could be more positively influenced by watching Star Trek reruns and others still by being given a camera. Trying out different perspectives may open new doors and new solutions.
Whatever happened to moderation?
June 24, 2009 by Juliet Chase
Filed under Pursuit of Happiness
I’m starting to think we’re turning into a generation of obsessive-compulsive worriers. Or at least the news media is doing its best to make that happen. This morning I saw the fourth or fifth segment so far this summer on skin cancer with the recommendation that women apply sunscreen to their face and body and then makeup with sunscreen in it over that, cars should have tinted windows and you shouldn’t pick the window seat on an airplane. While it’s true that skin cancer rates have risen for White people in the U.S., death rates have not. And if you’re any other race there have been no statistical changes in detection or death. That’s not me talking, it’s the CDC. Isn’t anybody questioning what damage all these chemicals applied daily and avoidance are doing compared to some sun exposure? There are studies in progress that suggest a link between low sun exposure and developing MS. When it comes down to it, skin cancer is a lot easier to catch and treat. I’m not inclined to sit out and bake and I try to get sunscreen on for long days outside or at the beach. That seems to me to be the approach that feels right – I’ll take the risk that driving to the grocery store with untreated skin (and no makeup!) might backfire on me someday. My instinct says doing anything else would be more dangerous.
Whatever happened to preaching moderation? I guess it’s harder for the newscasters to look anxious while talking about not going to extremes. However, I think we all might have been healthier, mentally and physically, before we started competing for who can live the longest. All this worry can’t be good for us – is the goal to make it to 100 without skin cancer or to 98 without an ulcer?
Diversity versus the easy route
June 8, 2009 by Juliet Chase
Filed under Pursuit of Happiness
I just got the national newsletter for the organization I volunteer with in the mail. I am perturbed by a short profile piece for a group on the other side of the country. Because this is an organization that is part of the court system it varies greatly from state to state and county to county but the core ethos is the same: members of the community advocating for kids ‘in the system’. After having volunteers drop out prematurely and leaving kids in the lurch, the featured group had analyzed their retention of volunteers and decided what characteristics would keep a volunteer involved: over 40, in a relationship, not working full-time, had raised children. Wow- that seems like a pretty homogeneous profile particularly given that I don’t meet a single one of those criteria, love volunteering with my local group and I know I’ve been successful. I can appreciate their motive in wanting volunteers to stick around but are they doing right by recruiting within such a narrow bandwidth? That doesn’t look like a profile of a community to me. Is it really serving the organization or the kids to narrow things down that far? They run the danger of having a single definition of “right”. It’s easy to define diversity as a matter of ethnicity and race and so common in our vernacular that I think people frequently forget that it means more than that. They’ve come to treat diversity like an item on a checklist to be completed as opposed to an ongoing process. It will always be an ongoing and evolving thing because the world is always changing – that doesn’t mean we’re doomed to be racist, just that we have to keep updating our cultural perspective of how we label people.
Why didn’t they look at themselves?
It seems to me that this organization looked only at what made up the profile of the volunteers that stuck around instead of what might make the volunteers that left stay. Why? Because it’s so much easier to evaluate how to change others than how to change ourselves. Odds are good that they’ve gotten comfortable with their office politics and ways of doing things within the team. They don’t want to have to change that. But that’s where diversity becomes possible, where positive and amazing change can happen.
College kids almost always complain about having to take breadth classes outside of their major, I know I did. I just wanted to get on with it and not have to switch mental tracks to something completely different. But that’s what well rounded means and that’s something that never really goes away; it’s less work and less stress to stick with the familiar – people we can easily identify with, subjects we already know something about, places we’ve been to before. And you can live a safe and comfortable life like that but I wouldn’t call it fun, interesting, or rewarding.
How a floor plan can map your mind too
May 12, 2009 by Juliet Chase
Filed under Health and Happiness
Image by viralbus
How we perceive our environment really does say as much about how we think as it does about our choice of homes. And memory can be a funny thing. Drawing a floor plan of your home can tell you a lot about your subconscious values and associations. It’s a rare person that remembers things exactly as they are so this is about what you can learn from the discrepancies, rather than if there are any. This exercise may teach you a lot or a little about yourself and like many things you’ll likely get more out of it the more time you take with it. Although even a quick run through can be revealing. It’s definitely fun and can be interesting to compare results with someone you live with or a friend whose home you know well. Find some graph paper to help keep your lines straight and then dive in. One tip is if you make one square on the graph paper equal to 12 inches you won’t need to tape too many pages together.
Step 1: From memory, draw a floor plan of your home, including all the levels, doors, windows, closets. etc. It’s great to do this one at work or at a coffee shop where you won’t be tempted to cheat by walking around. Make it as accurate as possible and then put it away.
Step 2: When you have some time and preferably an assistant for the measuring tape, draw a second floor plan of your home by going room to room and measuring the walls, windows, door widths etc.
Step 3: Now compare the floor plan from memory with the measured one. It’s amazing how the brain can leave out the only doorway or an entire stairwell leading to the second floor. What did you forget? If you forgot a door to a specific room, what is that telling you? Are you closing off that part of your life even if you haven’t physically barricaded the room? What rooms did you make bigger or smaller than they are? What rooms did you get pretty much spot on? It’s possible that rooms that you perceive as smaller, just have too much stuff in them and a little rearranging will leave your home and your psyche feeling more comfortable.
Was this a useful exercise? Please come back and share what you learned!
Perspective
May 4, 2009 by Juliet Chase
Filed under Visual Meditation of the Week
Why is it that the human eye sees straight rows as angling to a single point on the horizon?
Do your thoughts do the same thing? Leaving room for only a single conclusion, one right answer? Take a moment and ponder where each row (or question or problem) is really leading – what might lie at the end of it, if it isn’t the single destination you can perceive from a distance.
Skagit Valley tulip fields, Juliet Chase, all rights reserved
4 Reasons to keep books for re-reading
April 16, 2009 by Juliet Chase
Filed under The Art of Happiness
I had an epiphany yesterday. (That alone is newsworthy, but not really the point I’m trying to make.) An idea that would pay my bills, feed the homeless, and get home sales moving again. Who knows if it will really work – I’ll be finding that out shortly. The thrill is in the confluence of thoughts that brought the idea and a whole new world of possibilities and things to learn. As I was thinking about why I hadn’t thought of it before and how I got to it now I realized that books played a vital role and that re-reading is not given enough credit as process.
1. The inspiration for my new idea came from many sources and that’s the first reason for re-reading. I was going through one book that I’ve had on my shelves for close to ten years and read at least ten times and another for the second time that I acquired last week. The mixing of voices in my head gave me a new perspective.
2. Like many, I am an impatient reader, whether it’s a novel or a textbook or a self-help book I want to know the plot, point, or critical information as quickly as possible. Once I’ve got that down, I find that each subsequent read I retain more nuances, sidebar information or a non-essential dialogue that adds a little more color. I should point out that if I didn’t like the plot or find the key information helpful, I’m unlikely to give it a second chance!
3. Things change. The people, jobs, politics, and technology in your life are probably different in some way than they were a year ago. You’ll bring that new perspective to a book each time you approach it so new things will jump out or recede. You may have different answers to exercises in a book that will lead you to new conclusions.
4. I have heard from several senior acquaintances that one of the impacts of aging is forgetting books that they’ve read. I can hardly wait! I have kept several old favorites around for just this purpose – having re-read them so many times I practically have them memorized they are no longer a joy to turn the pages. But someday, they’ll be new again. So I keep them.
Change your angle
April 6, 2009 by Juliet Chase
Filed under Visual Meditation of the Week
It’s hard to take a really bad picture in the Spring tulip fields. But it’s amazing how many people only see them in one way – from an adult height and at a safe distance from the mud.
Are you doing the same thing with a challenge in your life? Try changing your physical perspective (sit on the floor, etc.) while you ponder the issues and see if you don’t get some new answers.
Skagit Valley tulip fields, Juliet Chase, all rights reserved
Context
March 30, 2009 by Juliet Chase
Filed under Visual Meditation of the Week
There are not many places in the world where level ground turns out to be the middle zone in the landscape. People too, often see themselves at the bottom or at the top of any particular endeavor.
Are you giving equal time and perspective to the depths and the heights in your life? Or do you see only the mountains still to be climbed?
Arizona, Juliet Chase, all rights reserved
