Harnessing the healing power of snark
Image courtesy of Free Foto.
He is quite the Renaissance Man.
He can receive the following text from me:
“If I’m asking myself, ‘How much pain should I be able to tolerate before I take any meds?’, is that a sign that I should be taking some meds?
Also: BUNNIES!”
and be just as happy to hear the one (that I am asking for help in taking care of myself) as he is to hear the other (signs of the return of spring).
The other day I walked into the living room and saw a computer generated/animated dinosaur cavorting around on our television screen. That was not at all unusual for our household, but was was unusual was just how flummoxed it seemed to be making my engineering, scientifically astute, technologically savvy husband.
“I’m watching this show about sex in space,” he told me-and then I was flummoxed, and could actually feel important neurological connections in my brain explode as I tried to reconcile his words with what I was seeing on TV.
Because,…what?!
So naturally I had to stay and watch after that, and after treating us to yet another re-enactment of How Dinosaurs Became Extinct (which, if I recall correctly, they lightly referred to as, “One really bad afternoon”, as the reflection of the fatal meteor loomed larger and larger in the eyes of the poor, doomed dinosaur), they then turned the show over to some experts to give us some commentary on how all of this related to us human beings. And sex. And also, outer space.
So they brought out some serious, academic-ey-looking guy, and I’m sorry to say that I don’t remember anything more about him, because I was so completely distracted by his message. Which more or less boiled down to exhorting us humans to hurry up and find a way to leave earth and go procreate in space, or else we too would fall victim to some horrendous natural disaster and be wiped out as a species. Only this time, it would be our own fault, because we foolishly chose to remain earthbound, instead of earnestly seeking out new environments in which to do the deed.
And that is this guy’s job. He is an expert at doom-mongering, and encouraging us to go have sex in rocket ships.
And of course, all I could think about was, “Where the hell do you go to get a Ph. D. in that?!”
I am coming off of an exceptionally bad pain week (STUPID FIBRO!!), which has apparently leached away all traces of humor from my system. I really hate that.
But I also hate not posting at all for almost a week.
So for today I will direct you toward this very cool blog I just discovered, whose author, Kendra Thornbury,, recently wrote a terrific post all about freedom, which happens to be my Very Dearest Love, right after Telling Funny Stories.
“What is freedom?” she asks.
And I love her answer to this question:
“In this moment, I think of it as an unrestrained expression of my true self regardless of who I’m around and what is going on and complete ownership of the reality I am creating. It’s feeling contentment with what is and realizing that regardless of what is transpiring, I am at choice. It is residing in the BEingness of my true essence, that which is unwaveringly solid in the greater truth. ”
As my coaching school instructors would say, “I’ll have some of that!”
Back in 2004 I attended the first ever in-person retreat for Artella, the art magazine founded by Marney K. Makridakis.
One of the speakers at the retreat was the very funny and inspiring Jill Badonsky, whose latest book is entitled The Awe-manac: A Daily Dose of Wonder. Based on the idea of The Old Farmer’s Almanac, The “Awe-manac” contains 365 days worth of prompts, quotes, and exercises to help inspire your own personal creativity. Here is today’s entry:
I am fortunate today to be the featured stop of Jill’s “Awe-manac” blog tour, so please make sure to give her a very warm welcome here to “Using My Powers For Good”.
Hi, Jill, and welcome.
I have had the privilege of meeting you in real life, so I know what a funny person you are. But in the preface to The Awe-Manac you write that, “While writing this book I experienced one of THE darkest shadows of my life in terms of loss, hardship, confusion, estrangement, renegade bio-chemistry, mental gridlock, and failure to use my emergency brake.” What role, if any, did humor play in helping you to survive this period in your life?
Surprisingly, sometimes I take things way too seriously. However, when meeting up with the perfect storm of family drama-laced abysmality intersecting with turncoat biochemistry when I was writing the book wasn’t one of those times.
The writing of The Awe-manac was like an escape into bliss-filled mirth, something I perfected during a rather screwed-up childhood for which I’m ever-so grateful. I sometimes think the greater difficulty I experience, the more raw and available my humor is. When I don’t use my energy to suppress the rancid darkness, it is available for lightening up. I was laughing out loud as I wrote the book, rather surprised at the humor I was being delivered and wondering if others would find it as funny as I did. Additionally, watching Ellen, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report was like fueling my funny bone. All three of which I would watch in order to put me in the appropriate mood for writing.
How do you see the relationship between creativity and spirituality? Do you think the practice of creativity could be considered a spiritual practice?
Creativity is a spiritual practice in my opinion. I believe we create our reality with the thoughts we choose to paint our existence, our attitude and our perspective. And it’s so clear that our ability to be creators is our divinity.
When we are in the creative journey we are most fulfilled, the timelessness and flow seems to be provided by a higher power and our creations have the potential of making an incredible difference in the lives of those who sense, see, hear, and touch them. When we overcome the demons that surface frequently when we are engaged in creative endeavors, we are strengthening our spirit with grace, patience, confidence and resourcefulness.
Spirituality comes into play in the Kaizen-Muse Creativity Coaching Model by facilitating our higher self in accordance with our creative call.
My favorite Awe-Manac observance so far this year has been January 22nd, “Cat Appreciation Day”. Cats feature heavily here on my blog, and I know that you are a cat lover yourself. If cats could speak, what do you think they would tell us, for example, about “How to use our powers for good?” or “How to live with more awe and wonder in our everyday lives?”
I believe that cats are wonderful role models for Zen-thinking and forgiveness. I stepped on my cat’s tail by mistake this morning and he instantly forgave me and forgot about it when I held him.
Cats would tell us to be vigilant about being present, be ready to swat a low-flying idea when it passes within our batting range, and when in doubt, wash. Nap frequently so these things are easier..
Jenny, thanks for asking such thought provoking questions and for having a blog that uses its power for good. I enjoyed being here.
It was my pleasure!
Jill Badonsky, M.Ed., is an internationally recognized workshop leader, keynote speaker, creativity-coaching pioneer, multimedia artist, storyteller, humorist and business entrepreneur. She has creatively consulted with Seventeen and Bust magazine, filmmakers, comedians, storytellers, artists, business CEOs, writers, women in business and groups through-out the country. Her background is in occupational therapy, writing, performance, marketing, educational media and instructional design. She is an award winning public speaker, writes a monthly column for Creativity Portal and is editor of the monthly Muse Flash.
Jill is also founder and director of Kaizen-Muse Creativity Coaching – a ground-breaking model for coaching resistant and sensitive creative people or anyone wanting to create a positive change in their lives. She is author of The Nine Modern Day Muses (and a Bodyguard): 10 Guides to Creative Inspiration for Artists, Poets, Lovers, and Other Mortals Wanting to Live a Dazzling Existence and the upcoming book for Running Press, The Awe-manac: A Daily Dose of Wonder.. She wrote and performed the one woman show I Can’t Always Handle Reality, But It’s Really the Only Place to Get a Good Cup of Coffee. Jill lives in the San Diego with two cats and a bougainvillea.
Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net
I had to go to the doctor today and get my medications adjusted, as the past two months have pretty much felt like one, giant panic attack. As I was sitting in the waiting room, pretending that I was not seconds away from jumping out of my own skin, I was happily distracted by the woman across from me who suddenly asked, “Now, why are you taking off your clothes at the doctor’s office?’
I looked up, expecting to see a mother talking to a child, a situation which I could totally understand. As legend has it, as a toddler I myself was wont to throw off all my clothes at the slightest provocation, whenever I wanted to underscore a Very Important Point I was trying to make with my parents, such as, “Look at me!”, or, “Hey, I’m naked!”, or, “I would like some French Fries, please!’
However I was quite surprised to see that it was not a child, but rather a man in his 70’s or 80’s who was being asked about his sudden urge to unclothe. From what I could see he had entered the doctor’s office wearing anywhere from 7-10 shirts all at once, and was now delighting in deliberately removing them, one by one, and then folding them carefully and precisely into a pile on his lap.
That in itself was pretty funny, but the best part of the whole situation was the look of utter and absolute glee on this man’s face. It was as if he just couldn’t believe that he lived in a universe where he got to wear ten shirts at a time, and then remove them all in front of other people.
I couldn’t help but feel that this was a little gift for me from the Universe, just it’s way of saying, “Hey, don’t worry, we’ve got your back. You’re gonna be just fine.”
Either that, or the Universe really wants to see me naked.
“I had been continually exhorted to define my purpose in life but I was now beginning to doubt whether life might not be too complex a thing to be kept within the bounds of a single formulated purpose, whether it would not burst its way out or, if the purpose was too strong, perhaps grow distorted like an oak whose trunk has been encircled with an iron band…So I began to have an idea of my life, not as a slow shaping of achievement to fit my preconceived purpose, but as the gradual discovery and growth of a purpose which I did not know.”
-Marion Milner
I did have one more interesting conversation at my neighbor’s birthday party with a fellow guest, who, after she presented our neighbor with his birthday present (a new bathrobe), came and sat down next to me on the couch.
For lack of a better way of starting up a conversation, I complimented her on her choice of gifts.
“Yes,” she said, “I decided to give him a hospital robe.”
I must have looked alarmed, thinking she knew something about his health that I didn’t, so she hastened to explain her remark.
“Well, you know how, when you give an older person a robe or a really nice set of pajamas, they always say, ‘Oh, good, I’m gonna save this just in case I have to go to the hospital?’ ”
Um, no.
But apparently she did. From the way she was talking, it sounded like she pretty much spent all of her time outfitting elderly people for intensive hospital stays.
“As a matter of fact,” she said, “my Uncle Bernie actually set aside a robe to be buried in.”
Aha-now this was something I could relate to.
“Well,” I said, “it might have been that he was just trying to save people from having to make that decision for him after he died.”
She looked unconvinced, which was great for me because it meant that I got to tell this story:
“Ten years ago this summer my family gathered to say goodbye to my grandmother, who was dying of cancer. Her wish was that when she died, she simply be wrapped in a white sheet before she was placed in her coffin. This was simple, and beautiful, and did not at all take into consideration the fact that this would require there to be A Person In Charge Of Sheets. Since my mom is the oldest child in her family, and I am the oldest child in my family, this duty fell to the two of us.
So we headed off to the local Giant Shopping Mart, but unfortunately there was no section labeled, “Linens for the Soon-To-Be-Deceased”, or, “Easy Coffin Accessories”, so we were forced to stand in the middle of the sheet and towel aisle and have the following conversation:
“Do you think a queen sized sheet will be big enough to wrap all the way around the body?”
“I dontt know. I think it depends on whether the body is laid end-to-end or diagonally.
“Will a top sheet be enough to wrap the body in, or do you think we need a fitted sheet too?”
“Why the heck are there so many freaking choices for ‘a white sheet’? I know Grammie’s dying of cancer and all, but I think she could have helped us our here by being a little bit more specific on her particular color preference.”
Now, my mom and I have spent a VERY large portion of our lives being the quintessential “good girls”, but we also watch an inordinate amount of crime and detective shows on television. We’ve never actually been “on the wrong side of the law” ourselves, but we do sort of feel like we are experts on what could take a person there. So as soon as we first uttered the words, “the body”, we felt like it was really only a matter of time until we set of some kind of Crime Alert Sensor and found ourselves face down and handcuffed right there on the floor of KMart.
However, while we were waiting for the S.W.A.T. team to come and take us down, we still had to pick out a sheet for the burial. Which meant that we had to continue pondering questions such as,
“Well, how many times do you think a king size sheet can wrap around a body?”
and,
“How are we going to make sure that the body and the sheet stay together?”
Shockingly, we made it to the checkout counter without any evidence of an increased law enforcement presence, and were able to complete our purchase. At least, I think that’s what we did. Because by this time I had completely left my body, in preparation for enduring my likely prison stay, and was hovering somewhere in the vicinity of my left temple. So the end of this memory is a little fuzzy for me. I do think it involved extremely large amounts of therapeutic chocolate, however.
“So,” I concluded for the benefit of my fellow party guest, “it could be that your Uncle Bernie was just trying to spare you guys from having to go through something like that.”
I don’t think she was convinced. She left me pretty soon after that, and as we were leaving my husband remarked that she was “giving us a really funny look.”
I guess we’re not gonna be BFF’s anytime soon.
We cannot have self-trust if our mind is such a bad neighborhood that we’re afraid to go into it.
–Jennifer Louden
Suffering and gratitude-they can’t really be BFF’s.
–Lynne Morrell
Image courtesy of Free Foto.
1. About a week ago our next door neighbor called and asked if I could stay with one of her sons while she took the other one to swimming lessons. She couldn’t take them both, because her one little guy had pneumonia and wasn’t supposed to leave the house.
I told her that normally I would, but that I was sick too, and had just been diagnosed with fibromyalgia.
“It’s chronic, you, know, and my body’s all messed up, so I’m really not supposed to be around sick people,” I explained.
“What do you mean, ‘chronic’?” my neighbor asked, in what sounded like a panicked voice.
“Well there’s no cure-I just have to manage the symptoms.”
She sounded unduly upset as we hung up the phone, so as I was describing this conversation to my husband I said, “You know, I bet when I said ‘chronic’, she heard ‘fatal’.”
We saw our neighbor and her husband at the party we attended this weekend, and when I would have stood up to greet them they were all, “Oh, no, no, don’t get up. We gotcha.”
My suspicions were confirmed after they moved on to other guests when my husband turned to me and said, “Oh yeah-she thinks you’re dying.”
I really didn’t know how to handle this, but thankfully my husband was more than willing to go over and be The Ambassador Of Clearing The Air And Straightening Things Out, and was able to reassure them that, while things were kind of rough, I was not, in fact, dying.
2. Once that was all cleared up my neighbor and I had a grand old time catching up. We were talking about one thing and the other, and then somehow ended up with her asking me if I wanted to have kids.
I said no, that my husband and I live a pretty quiet life, but it really suits us because we are both nerds.
“Oh, nerds,” my neighbor said, “That always makes me think of someone who is really good with computers. Are you really good with computers?”
“Um, no,” I replied sadly. “I guess then that I’m actually just a dork.”
