Month: August 2013

Forgiveness

The High Holidays are coming. That means Yom Kippur. Introspection. The time to atone and ask forgiveness. The time to start fresh, cleansed of old vows, resolving to “do better”. I love Yom Kippur. I do believe in its power to clear my slate, as it were. But. Have you ever noticed there is ALWAYS a “but”? There are certain “wrong” behaviors of mine that I know, no matter WHAT I try to resolve, I know that I will fail at improving them. I can’t improve my behavior until I resolve my inner attitude.

There are 2 people out there with whom I have major grievances. One of them both wrongs me and is wronged by me. And if I am honest, probably she is more wronged by me than I by her. Because *I* recognize my erroneous behavior while she is oblivious. I’m not being unkind. It’s simply the truth. And raging against who and what a person IS is a foolish course of action for anyone else. Only WE can change who and what we are. Until she thinks that she needs change, it’s up to me to accept who she is. I know who and what she is. I love her anyway. I don’t like her very much. That’s my problem. I should let my love rule me and not my dislike. I try. But I fail. Repeatedly. I can give you lots of reasons why, but mostly it’s because I’ve not resolved my inner anger and so I fail. I’ll recite the litany and the prayers and the resolutions, but even as I do I am already despairing and failing. I do wonder if that invalidates everything. I suspect that what it really means is that I’m human and I’m still evolving.

The other person? I should not even go here, I’m sure. First, I’d be willing to bet he doesn’t know that I think he wronged me. Second, in the big picture, this person is really not someone who matters (should matter) in my life. Isn’t it curious how emotions have absolutely no consideration for reality? P!nk has a song out now, Try, with the phrase “Why do we fall in love so easy, Even when it’s not right”. Substitute any emotion for “love”. Sometimes it takes a long time for our logic to …. control? balance? right-size? our emotions. When this person hurt me, wronged me (and yes, I believe it was more than hurt, it was wrong), I was so damaged that I was ashamed. Now THAT is just foolish. *grin* And wrong. It took me several hours, but once I was able to “admit” to someone else what happened, the healing began. Aren’t humans curious? This really leads to a different post I want to write. One about how voicing anger, expressing our feelings, is NOT always healthy. But certainly burying them deep inside ourselves doesn’t work all that well either.

So. It’s been awhile, but it’s still in this year cycle. I still hurt. In Judaism you are supposed to go to anyone you’ve wronged and ask for their forgiveness. They can refuse to forgive you. You are required to go to them 3 times. Sincerely. With TRUE contrition. MEAN IT. Ask forgiveness for any wrong you have done them. They can refuse you twice. But after the 3rd time, assuming your atonement is sincere, well, my understanding is that the ‘sin’ is on the person refusing to forgive.

I believe truly that I was wronged. I believe that the person who wronged me has no idea the depth of my feeling. I suspect that if he knew, he’d apologize and ask forgiveness. I even think he’d mean it. And I believe that he’d wrong me again in some similar fashion. The hardest thing that I will do this Yom Kippur is to forgive someone who has not asked forgiveness. I will forgive him for being who he is. I will forgive him for hurting me so deeply when it was within his power to heal, not hurt. More importantly, I will work on forgiving myself and clearing my slate. I will try yet again to accept people for who and what they are. That includes myself. I will accept that my emotions run deep. I will accept that I often want what is unreasonable, and that I often want people to be something that they are not.

Wikipedia says that “Forgiveness is the renunciation or cessation of resentment, indignation or anger as a result of a perceived offence, disagreement, or mistake, or ceasing to demand punishment or restitution.” Ahuva, it’s time to forgive. And if you can’t listen to Yoda, then listen to P!nk. Try, try, try.

Sleep Means Energy

Sleep seems to be back
Several hours at a stretch
My energy soars!

What a relief. For whatever reason, the pain seems to have ebbed. Either I’m used to it, I’ve figured out a “comfortable” position or it has eased with the knowledge that yes, finally, I’m going under the knife. Whatever it is, oh my, I am soooooo happy to be getting some real refreshing sleep. REM and all that. So I went down to the basement and rearranged furniture (appropriated son’s dresser) and cleaned up. I’m REALLY hopeful that tomorrow I can go and do battle with the weeds. For a reward – hit the boardwalk at night. *grin* MORE stuffed animals. *laughing* Actually, for the last many years, whenever we win, we find some little child looking wistful and hand over our winnings. SO much MORE fun that way.

Conversing

This past week or so several people have brought a very interesting video to my attention: The Innovation of Loneliness.

It’s short, with nifty graphics and raises some VERY interesting thoughts. Two phrases in particular resonated quite strongly with me.

The first, “We are sacrificing conversation for mere connection“, occurs to me over and over in my work day. One of my primary ways of getting information is through microblogging (the internal equivalent of FB posting or Tweets). I cannot keep up with it. And yet – when I need specific information quickly, I always get an answer by tagging specific individuals. I am learning how to skim and sort and work my own triage on the incoming information. This is a topic on which I suspect I will spend a LOT more time here. My best friend Sarah and I spent endless hours swinging on the swings in our back yard, building imaginary worlds with words, talking through scenes and actions. I don’t remember us ever just sitting about and staring at the TV (Okay, yes I do. Her father had one of the first color TVs and I went to watch The Wizard of Oz at her house so I could FINALLY see the Horse of a Different Color and the Yellow Brick Road and the Ruby Slippers). I watched my son and his friends on their play dates. They played side-by-side with their computer games. Very few of their games involved interacting directly with each other with no middle-tool. What will THEIR children do on their playdates?

The other phrase that struck home was “If we are not able to be alone, we are only going to know how to be lonely.” This, in my opinion, goes to the heart of so much psychological therapy. If we do not love ourselves, how can we be loveable? If I cannot be alone with myself and enjoy myself and feel at peace with myself, how can I ever find happiness? Happiness will always be something that must be supplied externally. I’m not saying that external validation or recognition is a bad thing or that it’s not extremely beneficial. We all love to be appreciated. But the beauty of loving oneself and having internal faith is that no one can take it away. It tends not to wear out, or be invisible when it’s needed most. If you love yourself and believe in yourself, that confidence and self-respect shows. Humans are curious creatures. If we see someone who exudes confidence and self-respect, we tend to share that confidence and respect.

Microblogging, FB, tweeting – sure, that’s fun and has its place. But for me, they are like grabbing a cup of water from an onlooker as you run by in the marathon. It’s enough to tide you over until the end of the race, when you need to drink deeply and nourish yourself. We need the deep drink. Over the last year I have made a conscious effort to make sure that I meet with my friends F2F on as regular a basis as we can. Obviously that’s not possible with some. So we’ve gotten back in the habit of writing newsy emails. For some people writing doesn’t work, it takes long phone calls. Whatever the method, I’ve tried to make the contact be conversation, not mere 140 character connecting. It’s too hard for me to quench my thirst with dozens of one liners.

Time to wrap this up. I’m going to the well to drink deep – brunch with a friend. L’chaim, friends!

Stepping Out

I started this blog over 5 years ago when I joined SecondLife. I wanted to share what I learned AS I learned and more, I wanted the folk who knew me to understand the joy and pleasure I derived from my existence in a virtual world. As I’ve mentioned many times before, my experiences as an SL avatar have become inextricably tied to my sense of self, no matter in which reality I find myself. I am Ahuva and Ahuva is me. And for that, I am eternally grateful.

I have a lot of things I’d like to say beyond my experiences in SL. I’ve done that before, but only intermittently. Now that so much of my work life is spent in community and social media, I find I have less time and energy for the things I enjoyed in SL. I am sorry for that – not being in SL more. But I am oh so very happy how both the who I became and what I learned in SL formed the “I” that I am today. From toying with my appearance to throwing myself under the bus to building and scripting and evenings at Tribeca and enjoying live music….. all of that brought me to the person who could step out for new adventures and experiences and growing in the world beyond SL.

One of my responsibilities in my current employment is to support someone in his blogging. He’s never blogged before. When I first met him, he thought the whole concept of “being social” at work was ill-advised. He sees things a bit differently now. We’ve discussed blogging: what do you say, how do you say it, how much do you say, how do you respond to people responding to you. I’m envious. I don’t think that blogging for him will be what it was for me. Different environments, different goals. But he’s finding his “voice” and he’s communicating what he wants to say and I – well I’m glad for him and I miss doing that too.

So I want to come back here. I’ve thought about what I might post. Most of what I want to say comes under the heading of “gee, I’ve really learned a lot in my life, come a long way, and I’d love someone to learn from what I say without having to learn it the ‘hard way’ as I did”. Blogging on that subject matter sends up warning flags in my psyche. I’m not sure I can do that. I’ve thought about writing a haiku a day. A coworker asked: how MANY days? Good question. “Every” day is a bit more commitment than I think I want. I thought about going back into SL regularly to do SL blogging. Again – probably more commitment than I can manage at this point.

I don’t know if or what or how I will share my “blog voice”. But this is a start. No, a reboot. *grin* Operating system update……