The short version:
You don’t really know anything about some thing until that some-thing has to be your thing. Mind your Hypotheticals.
The long version:
The hypothetical is an interesting construct.
- Supposing. Guessing. Pretending. Surmising. Judging. All of which are acceptable actions in the Hypothetical. But in the Reality, those things can be dangerous.
- Decision-making is simple in the Hypothetical because the consequences are bound only by the self-serving imagination of the surmiser. Even if they are being as realistic and honest with themselves as possible.
- Most of what comes about in the Hypothetical doesn’t come to be in the Reality…therefore the stories made up there are never actually challenged. And when the Pretend isn’t challenged, oh how easy it is to be tricked into believing the narrative is accurate.
- When in the Hypothetical, because consequences are self-serving and narratives are always accurate, those delusions pave a really smooth way for judging others.
- The Hypothetical doesn’t require humility and the openness to feedback because it’s all conjecture anyways. Why bother being vulnerable?
And then there is the conundrum of confusing the Hypothetical with the Reality….people living in their present Reality but behaving, thinking, feeling and speaking as they do in their Hypothetical.
This Day in 2018:
Post-op Day 1
I don’t have much in me to write… but a few things I want to be able to look back on:
My surgeon told me I was in the 5% of people that have the artery he needed right on top of the abdominal muscles. Which means that he didn’t have to touch the muscle at all. I needed a win. I got a win.
Surgery was successful and I’m recovering very well despite a lot of pain.
My heart is heavy. I cried a lot today. Everything is hard. Everything about everything. Hard. Yes, I had a “put me back together” surgery because I am well enough to be here. But I hurt. And I look down and don’t like what I see. I have to remind myself that this is not the finished product. But even in that it means more pain. More adjustments. More procedures. More patience. More time. More unknowns.
I am grateful for amazing doctors and nurses. They have loved me well in this crazy hard place.
And now I’m too tired to think anymore and I am not feeling well. One more night here in the hospital and hopefully going home tomorrow.
This Day in 2019:
Albert, Tattoos and Magic, Round 2
Today was rough. In every way. It took an enormous amount of energy to keep it together. I got in my car after work and I let the tears run freely down my cheeks as I drove.
And then I had my second tattoo consult with Albert and I’m officially over the moon excited for what he’s designing. It was really difficult for me to watch him draw on an actual picture of my body and the vulnerability that is required for me to let him see my body in its raw ugliness as he draws and creates the art that will tell my story, is intense. Nonetheless, I will cling to my excitement and focus on the gratitude I have for the gift he is giving me. The countdown is on….tattoo session 1 is in a couple of weeks! Thank you, Albert, for how you are impacting my story.
This Day in 2020:
The Noise of Distraction Cheats the Grace in the Quiet
I was talking with a friend about what it is like to walk through painful circumstances; each of us sharing one element of our uniquely hard stories. Me, cancer. Her, divorce.
So often, us humans want to distract ourselves….we fill our schedules, our time, our relationships, our conversations, our space…with noise. We are so uncomfortable with quiet. We struggle to sit in nothing. We shame ourselves for not doing…or thinking…or saying. And we choose distraction over quiet even more so when we are in the midst of something hard because, well, the noise of distraction is easier than the quiet of purpose.
Tragedy is purposeful but unfortunately, the tendency is to think, ‘How fast can I get through this?’ Or, ‘This is just a detour, I gotta get back on track.’ Or, ‘I can’t wait till this is over…’ Or, ‘This is just a bump in the road.’ But don’t these just cheat the purpose of the tragedy?
At the time, I didn’t understand what I was learning and I certainly didn’t intend on cancer having any purpose or teaching me anything because I, too, wanted to just get it all over with, but right away in the beginning, I learned to embrace the quiet. Maybe it was because that is all I had the energy for in the days following a most vicious mastectomy, sitting in my cancer chair, hardly able to do even the most basic of things. Literally. Time seemed to stop. I just sat there. In the quiet of nothing.
I embraced the quiet because whether I liked it or not, the quiet came and all throughout the next days and months and years, the quiet came some more because so did the hard. And grace met me there.