Communicating with the Body

 

body language - noun - the process of communicating nonverbally through conscious or unconscious gestures and movements (Google)

So much of human communication is in the form of body language. So much can be said sans any words at all. Unfortunately, technology has seemingly mitigated the necessity of body language.  COVID related or not, a few no longer make the effort to see loved ones who are at a distance, preferring to keep in touch via texts, email, quick calls that can often be misunderstood or misinterpreted as body language, the most earnest communicator, is kept prisoner in a dark closet. Even the visual mediums, such as Zoom, FaceTime, Skype, often do not present us with a complete picture of physicality since some users don't feel comfortable enough to be expressive on camera. When it comes right down to it, none of the video platforms are capable of duplicating the corporeal niceties of the human experience: a vigorous handshake, a warm hug, a comforting hand on a hand, etc. 

For me, the importance of body language cannot be overemphasized as it alone speaks volumes. For example, I love the intimacy of the dance, in particular, the slow dance, yet another social behavior that seems to be waning in the wake of contemporary sound often referred to as "music." At a recent wedding reception (weddings are my life these days), my adult daughter pointed out that the gestures, facial expressions, movements of the bride and groom on the dance floor reveal the extent of and perhaps authenticity of their love. As I listened to her, watched the bride silently stroke the cheek of the groom's face, I agreed wholeheartedly. Really, what would love be without the honest communication of body language? 

I don't know about you, but I hope we never reach the point at which the latest technological invention, the metaverse, replaces actual human communication via body language. Truly, there is nothing like the real thing, and it would be sad indeed if we lost it. 

#word-to-words, #spilled thoughts, #vocabulary, #good advice, #personal essay, #vocabulary, #blogs, #blogging, #entertainment, #books, #literature, #slice of life, #writing, #writing community,  #ReadersMagnet, #life tips 

The Friend, the Therapist, and Stabbing in the Front

friend - noun - a person whom one knows and with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, exclusive of sexual or family relations (Google)

therapist - noun - a person skilled (educated) in a particular kind of therapy (Google)

“A good friend will stab you in the front, not the back.” -unknown

The following is sound advice for those of you who are in emotional pain of any kind and feel as though friends may be more helpful than a trained therapist.

(F.Y.I. Legitimizing my thoughts on this subject are two college courses in psychology, much independent reading, plenty of life experience, conferences with four therapists, one being a man friend who is a top psycho-analyst recommended by Psychology Today.)

A good friend like a good therapist is most beneficial when direct and honest. He or she will stab you in the front. You don’t need someone who will “yes,” you, agree with everything you say just for the sake of appeasing your impressionable ego (or just for the sake of shutting you down). Although he or she may provide a panacea for your pain in the moment, in the long run, the “yes” man or woman is not your actual friend. 

On the other hand, if the good friend is too honest or too direct, he or she runs the risk of being misunderstood, being labeled an insensitive, opinionated “know-it-all” when he or she is just trying to light a match in the darkness. Many friendships have dissolved due to conflicts arising from misinterpretation or hypersensitivity.

An effective way to avoid the aforementioned is to enlist a professional. If you have a problem that plagues you over time (years, I am talking), you can’t expect to rely on a trusted friend to be there for you through it all, especially not on a daily basis. Because this person is NOT a trained therapist, he or she will reach his or her emotional limit (true friends are empathetic) and will most likely pull away, especially as the relationship has become dangerously one sided in your favor. (“Misery loves company,” but only for so long.) Once he or she exits, you will feel as though he or she has deserted you; and chances are, you will find yourself sans a valuable loyal friend. (Buddhists, very practical people, know not to share their pain with others for a good reason, so they meditate instead, a solid alternative to friends and therapists, and much safer and cheaper.)

The takeaway: If you can’t see yourself conferring with a Buddhist monk, choose a good therapist over a good friend, especially if you are experiencing signs of depression (persistent feelings of sadness over time) or obsession/preoccupation (the memory of the person who has harmed you haunts your conscious and subconscious mind). Choose a male therapist if your emotional assailant is a man; choose a female if it is a woman. The reason why gender is important here is that men intrinsically understand each other. A man would be able to enlighten you as to common male foibles (or just why your man did what he did), whereas a woman would just rely on textbook knowledge, which can be limited. She would probably side with you, too, because she wants you to return, and that’s not what you need because most likely, you have already been on your side all along, meaning you know what you did right. What you need to know is what you did wrong so that you don’t continue to make the same mistakes in the future, or you can just forgive the person who put the pin in your party balloon and begin to trust again sans resentment.

Good luck, my friends. The road forward from loss is not meant to be freshly paved.

#word-to-words, #spilled thoughts, #vocabulary, #good advice, #personal essay, #vocabulary, #blogs, #blogging, #entertainment, #books, #literature, #slice of life, #writing, #writing community,  #ReadersMagnet, #life tips 

The Situational Irony of Juxtaposition (and Love)

 

juxtaposition - noun - the fact of two things being seen or placed together with contrasting effect (Google).

situational irony - noun - when something occurs that is in direct contrast to what was expected. 

I don't know about you, but when I attend a wedding, I don't think about situational irony, juxtaposition, or any of the other literary devices even though as a retired English teacher, the likelihood of their creeping up on me is conceivable. Most likely, like you, I attend nuptials for celebratory reasons: I want to escape exegesis and wish the bride and groom well, reveling in their ebullience, which is almost always at its apex during the reception. On Sunday, I attended a wedding that involved the situational irony of juxtaposition: what I witnessed had not been expected and wound up being in direct opposition to the newly weds' unmitigated joy.

I kind of knew that when the minister used wine as a metaphor for wedded bliss (Jesus did turn the water into the controlled substance at Cana) in his brief sermon that this particular affair would at some point begin to reek of not booze, but situational irony as the bride has been trying to get her mother to cut down on her own consumption of the beverage. In fact, she enlisted me the night before, "Please remind me not to drink so much Chardonnay at the wedding, will you" albeit I didn't get the chance.

Yet the apotheosis of situational irony of juxtaposition unearthed its head shortly after I went out to the parking lot to obtain a sweater from my car. I, along with a mysterious bald man who left the party for a smoke, noticed that married friends of mine (both on round two) were in the midst of a verbal battle, the tempestuous climax of which occurred when the husband came frighteningly close to running his wife over with his BMW SUV. I jest not. Tragically, it was even more shocking than any social atrocity I had ever seen staged on The Housewives of New Jersey. Meanwhile inside the venue, the newly weds were soldered together somewhere on the dance floor, nuzzling and whispering sweet nothings into each other's ear. Yup. It doesn't get more situationally ironic and juxtaposed as that. "Reality. What a concept." (Robin Williams).

Which just leads me to one question: If love can be so strong at the start of the relationship (my conflicted friends were once in agreement, especially on their own wedding day), where does it go three to twenty-plus years later? How can something so beautiful evanesce into something so ugly? The answer? Things change. People change. Marriage, like the people who inhabit it, is flawed. 

So what's the takeaway? My advice to all of you married people who want to stay married would be to keep love in mind–the real, unconditional kind that begins and ends with kindness. "A life without love is like a sunless garden (or a wedding reception) when the flowers are dead" (Oscar Wilde). There is no conflict that cannot be resolved before the big guns are rolled out in the way of a gunned engine and spinning tires. The former is essential, the latter, unnecessary. 

 

#word-to-words, #spilled thoughts, #vocabulary, #good advice, #personal essay, #vocabulary, #blogs, #blogging, #entertainment, #books, #literature, #slice of life, #writing, #writing community,  #ReadersMagnet, #marriage, #love and marriage, #Anne Tyler, #life tips 

Amateurs and Marriage

 

amateur - noun -  1. a person who engages in a pursuit on an unpaid basis 2. a person who is incompetent or inept at doing something (Google)

As summer tends to be a season devoted to the sealing of sacred covenants, what better book to read before or after attending weddings (if you tend to lean more toward realism/cynicism) than Anne Tyler's The Amateur Marriage. Which I just finished as a book club selection days before I'll be included in two celebrations of marriage in one week. The novel depicts romantic, self-centered amateurs, Pauline and Michael, gorgeous star-crossed lovers who fall in love instantaneously when too young (like Romes and Jules) and decide to "make it real" after getting caught up in the rush of a world war. After years of emotional turmoil whilst raising three very different children, Pauline instructs Michael to "get out" on the night of their thirtieth anniversary, and he does, rarely to look back, like so many in fiction and in real life have done. Unfortunately, the divorce rate doesn't seem to be diminishing in either realm despite more and more reasons to stay together, including but not limited to "the children." It is what it is.

I, myself, am not a fan of marriage or anything resembling a marriage. Like many of you, I was married to the wrong person who seemed right in the moment, but like fictive Pauline, I was too young to grasp the meaning of "forever," too naive to remember that people evolve or disintegrate over time; nothing stays the same. A promise or contract such as the one involved in nuptials is binding, and it often leads to complacency and the truth, the real self emerges because it can sans fear, and it can be paralyzing to the other person who signed on the dotted lines and who is a bit behind in terms of revealing idiosyncrasies. In short, any degree of change in behavior can be a bitch. 

If I were to give my friends' daughters, who will find themselves brides this weekend and next, advice, I would tell them there is no right way to approach marriage because like everything in life, it is a risk. You can watch limitless YouTube videos, read multiple books, go to a dozen therapists, and still find yourself in the amateur category. I can't even plug communication skills as being the answer to longevity here because sometimes you can communicate your needs to a deaf ear, resulting in "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink." Disengagement is the number uno cause of divorce.

A successful "professional" marriage or lengthy relationship as opposed to an unsuccessful amateur one depends on tolerance, i.e. how much you can tolerate from your life partner who isn't always going to be what you want him or her to be. You can either develop a thick skin that protects a sound sense of humor and stick it out for fifty to seventy years, or you can cut your losses and do like Michael does in Tyler's book; but even he has regrets in the end because he is a reasonable facsimile of a human being. We are authentic humans, so like everything else in life, love and marriage will never be easy to negotiate. 

#word-to-words, #spilled thoughts, #vocabulary, #good advice, #personal essay, #vocabulary, #blogs, #blogging, #entertainment, #books, #literature, #slice of life, #writing, #writing community,  #ReadersMagnet, #marriage, #love and marriage, #Anne Tyler, #life tips 

My Mother's Unoriginal Adages

 

adage - noun - proverb or short statement expressing a general truth (Google). 

Lately, I've been thinking about my mother, an idiosyncratic artist who passed suddenly in 1999. Often, she was unoriginal advisor, spouting borrowed adages from sources she could not recall off the bat. Paradoxically, even though she rarely took her own advice ("Do as I say, not as I do"), the proverbs were and are still worth remembering mainly because they are a rarity. Few bother to memorize and share axioms in this technologically obsessed society. Yet we all could benefit from their wisdom.

For those friends reading this blog who remember my mother or the curious few who might find them illuminating, the following compose some of my mother's most quoted aphorisms: 

1. "Live and let live" as opposed to Ian Fleming's Live and Let Die, the more popular of the two. (Hypocritically, my mother generally embroiled herself in feuds with neighbors albeit this one she used to break up fights between my sister and me.)

2. "An apple a day keeps the doctor away," a saying from Poor Richard's Almanac courtesy of Ben Franklin, famous for fathering over sixty illegitimate children and perhaps a few other things. (My mother  never went to any doctors, which resulted in her untimely demise.)

3. "God helps those who help themselves." I can't tell you how many times I've been tempted to hurl this one at an aggressive beggar. (By the way, my mother tended to say this to adult me; yet a day or so later, she'd send me a generous check.)

4. "He who expects nothing is never disappointed." Ironically, my mother had high expectations of everyone, my boyfriends in particular. Yet this is probably one of my favorites because in practice, it is actually true. Reduce your expectations, and happiness will stick to you like glue. 

5. "Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me." Like many, I used to get bullied by older kids on the school bus, so this one came in handy as a retort after gibes like "Your mother wears army boots." I still remember the culprit's stunned reaction after my confident reprise of my mother's quote. (By the way, my mother could be verbally abusive when necessary, tempting me to use it against her; but I wouldn't dare. Back then, kids were actually afraid of their parents.)

6. "This, too, shall pass." This one I actually recite quite a bit in the present, especially to my daughter and friends who are faltering under the weight of stressful situations. 

"All things must pass" is a synonymous adage of the aforementioned. Everything and everyone are fragile in this life. My mother passed within minutes, and there was nothing anyone could do to save her. She left us with much, including the miscellaneous truths of her adages, the thought or recitation of which help to keep her alive for us today. 

Here's a positive adage (not one of my mom's) to leave you with: "Keep your face to the sunshine, and shadows will fall behind you."

#word-to-words, #spilled thoughts, #vocabulary, #good advice, #personal essay, #vocabulary 

 

The Sauced Soothsayer of Calabasas

 

soothsayer - noun - person able to see the future (Google)

I believe that prophets, seers, soothsayers, philosophers–whatever term you might use to refer to them–are ubiquitous, yet not particularly obvious to the naked eye. Often they are disguised as ordinary, flawed people you might meet on the street. Often even they don't realize they have a gift until they speak in discernible tongues, and their words of wisdom wind up staying with you. 

Two weeks ago, my daughter, cousin and I found ourselves in Calabasas, California, a chic town in between L.A. and Ventura that gained fame as the home of television's Kardashians. At about 2 p.m., we were standing, chatting on the sidewalk of the Commons, an upscale, outdoor shopping mall, when a total stranger, admittedly tipsy, sauntered up to us and hijacked our conversation. Being from the New York area, I was quite taken aback as public assertive friendliness from unknowns or even plain garrulousness is rare in my neck of the woods; but my cousin, who has lived in CA for decades, didn't find the man's verbal audacity unusual at all. Easily, deftly, he stole the show, segueing from one topic to another, centering–of course–on himself and sundry, sometimes sexual misadventures. At one point, the man looked at my daughter and said, "Now you must be single." She barely nodded the affirmative when he said, "Well, when you find a man, the one thing he will require from you is respect. A man will never leave you if he feels you respect him." Later after we finally managed to sidestep the stranger, I thought that no greater truth could have been spoken from such an unanticipated source. 

It is no surprise that the U.S. has a high divorce rate because there is so little in the way of respect. Apparently, in Vietnam, couples marry for life simply as they remember to be civil to each other. No matter where you live, kindness and consideration don't have to fade as the years go on. If there is true love, complacency need not creep into the mix. 

Even though it was not directed at me, the advice of the Sauced Soothsayer of Calabasas might just stay with me forever, I think and hopefully, with you. No one wants to be left out in the cold because they, he, or she has forgotten to be decent to the one person they, he, or she claim to love the most, one's partner. 

#word-to-words, #spilled thoughts, #vocabulary, #good advice, #personal essay, #vocabulary