Is it spring in the Pacific Northwest? I've been seeing cherry blossoms on trees for almost 2 weeks, now, along with crocus buds and full blown snowdrops. The rest of the bulbs have shoots several inches out of the ground, and the magnolias have their fuzzy silver buds. I've even seen red leaf shoots on rose bushes.
But the real kicker was the rhodo I saw blooming on the way to the kiddos' school this morning.
At the long term care facility where I am doing my social work practicum, I was recently 'trained' in administering the MMSE, also called a 'mini-mental.' It's a brief, language-based test of cognitive abilities in dementing adults. If one scores within a certain range, one is eligible for funding for Aricept, a drug for early to mid stage Alzheimer's. One is not to prompt the test taker at all while administering this test. Five out of the 15 points come from questions related to time and place orientation, such as, what day is it? Where are we? One question is, what season is it? If they say the wrong season, they get a zero. However, if they're off by a week, you can give them the point.
Spring doesn't 'officially' start until the end of March. That's a month away. And it has snowed in the Lower Mainland in March the last 4 years. However, based on observation, one could easily say it is spring right now. Would the dementing patient loose a point for saying it's spring?
Friday, February 12, 2010
Sunday, February 7, 2010
"Being satisfied is... a commitment, a stand we’re taking"
I came across this cool article about relationships. The gist of it: we often communicate from complaints in our relationships, rather than from happiness. You are the source of your own happiness, not your spouse, not your circumstances.
Relationships: Alive with Possibility
Cathy Elliott, Landmark Forum Leader |
Here’s something from a piece I read in Harper’s Magazine by Laura Kipnis called “The Domestic Gulag.” The author offers a brief sample of answers to the simple question: “What can’t you do because you’re in a couple?” (This information, she points out, is all absolutely true; nothing was invented. Nothing needed to be.)
You can’t leave the house without saying where you’re going. You can’t not say what time you’ll return. You can’t go out when the other person feels like staying home. You can’t go out just to go out, because you can’t not be considerate of the other person’s worries about where you are, or their natural insecurities that you’re not where you should be, or about where you could be instead. You can’t leave your (pick one) books, tissues, shoes, makeup, mail, work, sewing stuff …lying around the house. …You can’t amass more knickknacks than the other person finds tolerable—likewise sports paraphernalia. You can’t leave the dishes for later, wash the dishes badly, not use soap, drink straight from the container, make crumbs without wiping them up (now, not later), or load the dishwasher according to the method that seems most sensible to you. … You can’t talk on the phone when they’re in the room without them commenting on the conversation, or trying to talk to you at the same time. You can’t read without them starting to talk, and you’re not allowed to read when they’re talking to you. You can’t use the “wrong tone of voice,” and you can’t deny the wrong-tone-of-voice accusation when it’s made. … You can’t ask for help and then criticize the mode of help, or reject it. …You can’t express inappropriate irony about something the other person takes seriously. …You can’t not be supportive, even when the mate does something insupportable. … You may not criticize the other person’s driving, signaling, or lane-changing habits. etc., etc., etc.
Lots of our behavior in relationships is driven by complaint. How powerful are a person’s actions when those actions are the product of complaint? It’s doubtful we know any truly powerful people whose actions are shaped and driven by complaint. Complaint weakens our actions and our thoughts and our feelings. “The possibilities that exist between two people, or among a group of people, are a kind of alchemy. They are the most interesting thing in life,” says contemporary poet, Adrienne Rich. When relationships are driven by complaint or by keeping track of who did what, or the need to be right, to control, they likely possess a dreary, bickering kind of drama, but cease to be interesting. The wonderful world of human possibilities ceases to reverberate through them.”
At some point in our relationships with our partners, our coworkers, family members, it seems we have the thought that we’re not fully satisfied. Even if there are long stretches where things are great, at some juncture we find ourselves disappointed about something, or feel that something is missing—that our particular relationship(s) are not all we’d hoped for. And once those thoughts make their way to consciousness, a refrain is sure to follow. Dissatisfaction invariably follows satisfaction, because what we so often do with satisfaction is try to hold on to it. Satisfaction held on to, however, becomes mechanical—the antithesis of satisfaction. In William Blake’s words, “He who binds to himself a joy/Does the winged life destroy.” Satisfaction can’t be held on to like a thing, it can only be created. To create something requires a space in which to create, and when that space isn’t there, most likely it’s because we’re holding on to something incomplete from the past.
Completing things comes down to a matter of getting beyond the “yeah buts” and “how ’bouts” and the “but ifs,” “onlys,” and “whens” about how things “should” or “need” to look a particular way. Completing things frees us up. It doesn’t automatically imply that everything is going to be just dandy in the future, but it does mean that we can address whatever there is to address in our present-day relationships, instead of dramatizing whatever might have been incomplete from the past. When something is complete it is as it is, there is not a need for something else. It’s as it is without being obscured by the way it should be. The should-bes, ought-to-bes, the way we want it to be—our ideals or comparisons with other things, other people, other times—all kind of drop away. There isn’t a sense that things “must” be different. It might be pleasant or preferable to have things be other than they are, but there isn’t an attachment to having something else, or a need for some part of it not to be there. The point is that something can be missing like a possibility vs. “missing” as if it is wrong or bad. When something’s missing as a possibility, there’s not a sense of insufficiency or inadequacy—there’s an allowing for and an acceptance of the way it is. What’s missing here doesn’t exist like a thing, but rather as a possibility for something—and with that comes a freedom.
Each of us has experienced moments in our lives when we are fully alive—when we have no wish for it to be different, better, or more. We have no disappointment, no comparison with ideals, no sense that it is not what we worked for. We feel no protective or defensive urge—have no desire to hold on, to store up, to save. Such moments are perfect in themselves. We experience them as being complete, and know a space within ourselves where such moments can be generated. It’s a shift or a state change, from being a character in a story to being the space in which the stories occurs—the author, as it were, consciously, freely. It is a transformation—a contextual shift from the content in our lives being organized around getting satisfied—to an experience of being satisfied.
And because relationships exist in language (not just as a set of feelings or accumulation of experiences, for example), there’s a malleability, a plasticity, a can-be moved-around-ness about them. When we walk around dissatisfied, thinking the other person should be different in one way or another, or say something like “they never really understood us,” or that “their expectations were unwarranted,” or “their idiosyncrasies were annoying,” what is really happening is that we are saying that. And the other person is likely saying, in some manner or another, what’s so for them. In all cases, it’s people speaking to themselves, speaking to others, or other people speaking about other people speaking to each other—it’s all occurring in language. When we shift the locus of our dissatisfaction and complaints from something “out there” to which language can only refer, to something that is located “in” language, what’s possible shifts.
It’s not necessarily a fact that we’ll be satisfied if such-and-such happens in a relationship, or doesn’t happen. Being satisfied is not a feeling later labeled with the word “satisfaction”; rather it is a commitment, a stand we’re taking for that possibility. That stand becomes the “chute” down which what we’re “up to” can be realized. When that happens, the conditions and circumstances for our relationships begin to reorder and realign themselves. How we see and hear others and how they see and hear us is transformed. This is what it’s all about—to be satisfied before anything happens.
You can’t leave the house without saying where you’re going. You can’t not say what time you’ll return. You can’t go out when the other person feels like staying home. You can’t go out just to go out, because you can’t not be considerate of the other person’s worries about where you are, or their natural insecurities that you’re not where you should be, or about where you could be instead. You can’t leave your (pick one) books, tissues, shoes, makeup, mail, work, sewing stuff …lying around the house. …You can’t amass more knickknacks than the other person finds tolerable—likewise sports paraphernalia. You can’t leave the dishes for later, wash the dishes badly, not use soap, drink straight from the container, make crumbs without wiping them up (now, not later), or load the dishwasher according to the method that seems most sensible to you. … You can’t talk on the phone when they’re in the room without them commenting on the conversation, or trying to talk to you at the same time. You can’t read without them starting to talk, and you’re not allowed to read when they’re talking to you. You can’t use the “wrong tone of voice,” and you can’t deny the wrong-tone-of-voice accusation when it’s made. … You can’t ask for help and then criticize the mode of help, or reject it. …You can’t express inappropriate irony about something the other person takes seriously. …You can’t not be supportive, even when the mate does something insupportable. … You may not criticize the other person’s driving, signaling, or lane-changing habits. etc., etc., etc.
Lots of our behavior in relationships is driven by complaint. How powerful are a person’s actions when those actions are the product of complaint? It’s doubtful we know any truly powerful people whose actions are shaped and driven by complaint. Complaint weakens our actions and our thoughts and our feelings. “The possibilities that exist between two people, or among a group of people, are a kind of alchemy. They are the most interesting thing in life,” says contemporary poet, Adrienne Rich. When relationships are driven by complaint or by keeping track of who did what, or the need to be right, to control, they likely possess a dreary, bickering kind of drama, but cease to be interesting. The wonderful world of human possibilities ceases to reverberate through them.”
At some point in our relationships with our partners, our coworkers, family members, it seems we have the thought that we’re not fully satisfied. Even if there are long stretches where things are great, at some juncture we find ourselves disappointed about something, or feel that something is missing—that our particular relationship(s) are not all we’d hoped for. And once those thoughts make their way to consciousness, a refrain is sure to follow. Dissatisfaction invariably follows satisfaction, because what we so often do with satisfaction is try to hold on to it. Satisfaction held on to, however, becomes mechanical—the antithesis of satisfaction. In William Blake’s words, “He who binds to himself a joy/Does the winged life destroy.” Satisfaction can’t be held on to like a thing, it can only be created. To create something requires a space in which to create, and when that space isn’t there, most likely it’s because we’re holding on to something incomplete from the past.
Completing things comes down to a matter of getting beyond the “yeah buts” and “how ’bouts” and the “but ifs,” “onlys,” and “whens” about how things “should” or “need” to look a particular way. Completing things frees us up. It doesn’t automatically imply that everything is going to be just dandy in the future, but it does mean that we can address whatever there is to address in our present-day relationships, instead of dramatizing whatever might have been incomplete from the past. When something is complete it is as it is, there is not a need for something else. It’s as it is without being obscured by the way it should be. The should-bes, ought-to-bes, the way we want it to be—our ideals or comparisons with other things, other people, other times—all kind of drop away. There isn’t a sense that things “must” be different. It might be pleasant or preferable to have things be other than they are, but there isn’t an attachment to having something else, or a need for some part of it not to be there. The point is that something can be missing like a possibility vs. “missing” as if it is wrong or bad. When something’s missing as a possibility, there’s not a sense of insufficiency or inadequacy—there’s an allowing for and an acceptance of the way it is. What’s missing here doesn’t exist like a thing, but rather as a possibility for something—and with that comes a freedom.
Each of us has experienced moments in our lives when we are fully alive—when we have no wish for it to be different, better, or more. We have no disappointment, no comparison with ideals, no sense that it is not what we worked for. We feel no protective or defensive urge—have no desire to hold on, to store up, to save. Such moments are perfect in themselves. We experience them as being complete, and know a space within ourselves where such moments can be generated. It’s a shift or a state change, from being a character in a story to being the space in which the stories occurs—the author, as it were, consciously, freely. It is a transformation—a contextual shift from the content in our lives being organized around getting satisfied—to an experience of being satisfied.
And because relationships exist in language (not just as a set of feelings or accumulation of experiences, for example), there’s a malleability, a plasticity, a can-be moved-around-ness about them. When we walk around dissatisfied, thinking the other person should be different in one way or another, or say something like “they never really understood us,” or that “their expectations were unwarranted,” or “their idiosyncrasies were annoying,” what is really happening is that we are saying that. And the other person is likely saying, in some manner or another, what’s so for them. In all cases, it’s people speaking to themselves, speaking to others, or other people speaking about other people speaking to each other—it’s all occurring in language. When we shift the locus of our dissatisfaction and complaints from something “out there” to which language can only refer, to something that is located “in” language, what’s possible shifts.
It’s not necessarily a fact that we’ll be satisfied if such-and-such happens in a relationship, or doesn’t happen. Being satisfied is not a feeling later labeled with the word “satisfaction”; rather it is a commitment, a stand we’re taking for that possibility. That stand becomes the “chute” down which what we’re “up to” can be realized. When that happens, the conditions and circumstances for our relationships begin to reorder and realign themselves. How we see and hear others and how they see and hear us is transformed. This is what it’s all about—to be satisfied before anything happens.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
moving from contemplation to determination/action*
I just posted the following on the Radical Unschoolers Network forum category New to Radical Unschooling:
* my title is a reference to Prochaska and DiClemente's "Stages of Change" model for addictions :)
I'm both nervous and excited!!request for support/ideas re: unschooling and full time working parents
I'm looking for support and ideas for how to take the plunge from public school. My problem is around time and money.
I have two boys, both 7, one is currently a first grader and the other a second grader. My husband works 5 days a week for 8 hours and commutes for 4 hours (he doesn't drive, so a 30-45 minute commute ends up taking ~2hrs on the bus). I am just over a year away from completing a BSW (should grad April 2011) and I'll be ~50k in student loan debt (something I'll be paying off for over 5 years). With this investment of $ and time into my career, me becoming a stay-at-home-parent is neither what I want nor what will work.
My kids hate school. I hate that they don't want to go. Right now, my experience is that I cannot afford an alternate to the 5 hours a day in free childcare that school provides. I have a childcare arrangement outside of school as well, and I receive a government subsidy for those childcare costs (in BC, Canada).
Right now, I feel that I will not be able to take my boys out of school until they are old enough to be at home alone for longer than 10 minutes (and I'm nervous about that, too!)
I have a lot of family support, although I don't know anyone who works from home or doesn't work. My mom has Fridays off work, and I'm sure I could ask her to take them on those days. My childcare provider may be willing to continue claiming the subsidy and put it towards 2 full days of care rather than 5 half days of care. I'd require a 4th 5th day of care for them, and I'm not sure how I can cover that every week. We may be able to juggle my husband's schedule to cover one weekday.
I'm not sure if I can manage, as it'll place extra stress and worry on me as the 'manager' of all of this, and I worry that it will be a strain on my relationships with my husband and my family. Juggling school and a family is already a challenge.
I'm hoping for suggestions for other parents (esp single parents) who have juggled full time out of the home employment with unschooling. What did you try? What were your frustrations? What ended up working best for you? How did it shift and change?
Also, I'd love some feedback about when kids are able to manage alone for a few hours. I know I was babysitting other people's children at age 12, but don't remember much about when my mom started leaving us home without a sitter. What are your experiences with this?
Thank you kindly :)
* my title is a reference to Prochaska and DiClemente's "Stages of Change" model for addictions :)
Monday, February 1, 2010
sick
yuck.
I have a sinus cold, a virus.
The kids and I missed school today. Tomorrow is supposed to be practicum day at the extended care facility. I wonder if they'll want me to stay home? They have signs requesting you not visit if you're not feeling well.
--
The kids were so happy to get to stay home. It was daddy's regularly scheduled day off, so we were all home.
I wish I could stay home with them every day. Alas, this is just not feasible right now.
However, I let them choose their own activities all day, other than insisting they get dressed. They chose to spend the whole day playing DS with the tv on in the spare room. They had their Pokemon cards and some assorted figurines and Lego 'figurines' they've made.
Soon we'll start reading, then early to bed, because, ready or not, it's back to school/work for all of us tomorrow.
I have a sinus cold, a virus.
The kids and I missed school today. Tomorrow is supposed to be practicum day at the extended care facility. I wonder if they'll want me to stay home? They have signs requesting you not visit if you're not feeling well.
--
The kids were so happy to get to stay home. It was daddy's regularly scheduled day off, so we were all home.
I wish I could stay home with them every day. Alas, this is just not feasible right now.
However, I let them choose their own activities all day, other than insisting they get dressed. They chose to spend the whole day playing DS with the tv on in the spare room. They had their Pokemon cards and some assorted figurines and Lego 'figurines' they've made.
Soon we'll start reading, then early to bed, because, ready or not, it's back to school/work for all of us tomorrow.
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