Looking Through The Lens Of The Present Moment

“Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.” – Dorothea Lange

I guess having over 73,000 photos stored on my phone would indicate I take a lot of pictures. It’s a diverse collection of images, but they all have one thing in common. I was there for all of them.

One of the unexpected life lessons photography has taught me is the importance of being fully present. To look through the view finder and notice every detail of what is in the frame. The colors, the light, the lines. The people, their placement, their expression.

To notice everything.

I’ve often struggled with the idea of being fully present. My ungrounded self tended to find some other place to be or some other thing to focus on. But the moment before I take a photo demands my full attention.

Noticing. Evaluating. Adjusting.

Presence.

The practice of such intentional presence has taught me to also be more present in the non-photographic areas of my life. Where what’s in front of me is essentially an oversized view Continue reading “Looking Through The Lens Of The Present Moment” →

When Less Than What You Deserve Is What You Think You Deserve

It was right there for the taking.

But taking is uncomfortable when for most of your life you’ve grown used to taking what’s been given to you instead.

The funny thing about hopes, dreams, and aspirations is that no matter what it is we want to experience and achieve, until we believe we are worthy to receive them we probably never will.

Growth has plenty of logic-based roadmaps on how to get from where you are to where you tell yourself you want to be. Just five easy steps to that pot of gold at the end of your rainbow. The logic is linear and simple. But it’s the emotional which will keep us from ever receiving the gold, even if it’s right in front of us.

Emotional, as in our deep core beliefs about who we are and what is actually possible for us.

No matter how badly we may want what we want, unless it’s aligned with what we are willing to allow ourselves to receive we won’t receive it.

We strive to grow and evolve yet our outer world is a perpetuation of what our inner world has allowed us to experience. That inner world impacts everything. Exciting new relationships become the next version of all the other less-than-ideal relationships we’ve disappointingly endured. Because on some level we’ve come to accept settling for less than we deserve is, well, what we deserve. So that’s what we repeatedly attract into our space. History ultimately repeats until we create a new, empowering inner narrative where we become worthy to receive what our heart and soul so deeply desire.

It works the same in all parts of life. Career growth stagnates because we’ve accepted where we are at is where we are supposed to be. Even working towards physical fitness goals. We Continue reading “When Less Than What You Deserve Is What You Think You Deserve” →

Granting Grace In Your Moments Of Darkness

“Be aware of what season you are in and give yourself the grace to be there.” — Kristen Dalton

The annual traffic jam the departing Cape Cod tourists create on Labor Day weekend is a regionally accepted symbol of the unofficial end of summer. Life reverts to the life we so often work to escape, even if for just a little while.

Inevitably seasons change. And while nature offers a predictable schedule for her seasons, life’s seasons have a seemingly random time frame of their own.

As humans we’ve all experienced seasons of abundance, of loss, of growth, of stagnation, of community, of isolation, of clarity, of confusion. Some seasons I’ve wanted to last forever, others seasons have felt like they’d never end.

I often struggled in those unwanted seasons of loss, stagnation, isolation, and confusion. I didn’t understand why I kept finding myself in such darkness, angry at God for putting me in such a hole, and cursing Him for keeping me there.

Graceful I certainly wasn’t.

Maybe that’s why I spent so much time there?

The wisdom found in age changed my relationship with life’s seasons. I may still not know why I find myself dealing with the ones I’d rather not have to deal with, but having been Continue reading “Granting Grace In Your Moments Of Darkness” →

Elevators Or Perpetuators?

8 billion people on this Earth and the vast majority of them fall into one of two groups.

Elevators or Perpetuators.

Those who will lift us up. Those who will keep us stuck.

There are far more people willing to keep us stuck.

Elevators are the rare ones. They’re the ones who know who we are and continuously support where we are going. Perpetuators would rather have us stay exactly where we already are, and if we let them influence us that’s exactly where we’ll stay.

The people we willingly surround ourselves with directly impact the trajectory of our life.

Some will lift us up.

Some will keep us stuck.

Elevators or Perpetuators.

Chose wisely.

Photo by Jason Dent on Unsplash

Urgency, Clarity, Intention, & Purpose

Her text brought an unexpected smile to my face.

It’s July 4th and my younger sister reached out with a memory of the day we celebrated America’s bicentennial. Our ever-crafty Mom baked a couple dozen cupcakes and us neighborhood kids got to decorate them with the red, white, and blue frosting she made. We all got together by the old fence separating our yard from Dave Wooler’s yard and expressed our patriotic spirit in a very sweet way.

I had forgotten all about that day but her text brought me right back into that moment. The faces, the voices…hard to believe it was 50 years ago.

Revisiting memories is often a double-edged emotional sword for me. Inevitably I will move past the memory itself and find myself fixated on the time separating the memory and the now. As in what have I done with my life in those years in between. As much as I’ve come to accept the path my life has taken, that nagging and quite persistent inquisitive voice within has the tendency to prompt me to revisit my path. The choices I made. The choices I didn’t make. The choices I never allowed myself to make.

Quite often this line of questioning was met with a tenacious hostile reaction from within, sort of the same reaction I experienced when I felt short of the paternal expectations I wasn’t living up to. I should have done better, and not knowing what better actually was didn’t let me off the hook for not doing Continue reading “Urgency, Clarity, Intention, & Purpose” →

A Safe Space For Emotional Authenticity

I remember her tears when she fell off the swing and broke her forearm many years ago. That was one of my bittersweet recollections as I stood before the swing set on a Friday afternoon, ratchet in hand, as I began to disassemble a part of her life she had simply outgrown.

She outgrew it well before I was ready to accept that she did.

Life is full of transitions, many of which happen well before we are willing to accept them. The impermanent nature of everything can lead us to resist realities we are not yet ready to embrace, clinging ever tightly in hopes of prolonging the inevitable. But the inevitable is called inevitable for a reason.

There is a delicate balance between holding on and letting go, a balance I struggled with as the pile of rusted bolts grew at my feet. Over the years I’ve learned to allow myself to handle life transitions however I need to handle them, giving myself the grace to toggle between the holding on and the letting go. There is no “right” way to measure my response against, as my journey and my process are uniquely mine to experience. No apologies or explanations needed. For others or for myself.

Just a safe space where I am free to be emotionally authentic in any moment, in any situation.

Even on a Friday afternoon with a ratchet in my hand.

Creating such a space was one of the most significant transitions I’ve made in my own life.

A space we all deserve.

Photo by Clay LeConey on Unsplash

Embracing The Intentionality Of Nature

The signs are everywhere. The green buds on the barren branches. The yellow daffodils starting their annual bloom. The chirping of the birds greeting the sunrise.

Spring has sprung, leaving the cold and colorless winter behind.

Nature is a wise teacher, and Spring is one of its favorite lessons. Renewal and rebirth. My favorite lesson, though, is one often overlooked and rarely considered.

Intention.

Nature isn’t random. It doesn’t dabble. It creates with intention. Everything is uniquely purposeful, everything created to express itself fully. Every bud, every bug, every blade of grass fulfilling the intentional promise of its creation, significant and purposeful in their own unique way.

Nature reminds me that I am not random. I, too, was created with intention, with a unique purpose only I can express, a purpose intended to be fully expressed. Within us is the opportunity Continue reading “Embracing The Intentionality Of Nature” →

The Magnetic Pull Of The Mud People

I’m often reminded of the things I need to hear, of the lessons I need to learn again. One such lesson is encapsulated in the phrase “No Mud, No Lotus”, a quote attributed to Vietnamese Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Hahn. It is a teaching of the necessity of contrast, of how the beautiful Lotus flower is first nurtured and cultivated in the mud and darkness in which it grows. Without the mud, there would be no Lotus. From the human perspective, the mud represents our pain and suffering, the Lotus represents our having grown through it.

From time to time I find myself cursing the mud I have once again gotten stuck in, frustrated and impatiently waiting for my desired Lotus to finally bloom. It’s only when I remember that being frustrated and impatient only gives me more to be frustrated and impatient about. When I release my tight grip on what I don’t want I am then able to make space to grasp what I do want.

When I release the mud, only then am I ready to receive the Lotus.

I’ve come to see that there are two types of people we tend to surround ourselves with. Mud people and Lotus people. The Mud people are more common, much more prevalent. Their familiar presence almost feels comfortable to some. The Mud people are the ones who keep us stuck. Intentionally or not, their proximity stirs up the murky waters of our lives, thickening the viscosity of the emotional mud we claim we want to escape but on some level have come to Continue reading “The Magnetic Pull Of The Mud People” →

The Homes I Can Never Go Home To Again

Ruben’s Atomic Chicken Fingers!

I unexpectedly found myself back in an area I briefly lived in about 30 years ago. A break in the meeting schedule and I was free to roam around for a few hours and I spontaneously decided to retrace some footsteps I had left three decades earlier.

Driving around brought me back mentally and emotionally. I even found a Spotify playlist of 1990’s alt-rock and grunge to bring me back even further. Salem to Nashua via Rte 111. Much was the same. Much was different. I knew I was different, much different than who I was back when I first traveled these roads those many years ago.

And then I remembered Ruben’s Atomic Chicken Fingers.

The more youthful me would find himself many a night belly to the bar at Shorty’s Mexican Roadhouse, never a need to review their rather extensive menu. I knew what I was there for, and the only question was for how many.

Lightly breaded, deep fried chicken fingers served with a sweet-yet-hot thick and sticky dipping sauce, the sweetness lowering your guard making it easy for the heat to find its way down the back of your throat. A cold beer at the ready and at that moment everything was perfect with the world.

I found my way into Shorty’s once again and at the same bar I excitedly ordered the same Atomic Chicken Fingers and I was ready to pick up where I had left off. But one bite in and I realized something had changed.

And it wasn’t the chicken fingers.

I’d always heard you can’t go home again. I understood that to mean time inevitably changes what home had always been. What was simply no longer existed as it was. But at the bar, I realized the only thing that had changed was me. I couldn’t go back to what was because I was no longer who I was. It wasn’t the food. It wasn’t the bar.

It was me.

I outgrew the memories.

I was the reason why I couldn’t go “home” again.

There is a perceived comfort of going home again, even if home wasn’t a very comfortable place to be. But it’s familiar, predictable, and known which tempts us to want to relive and cling to and even slightly revise the narrative to accommodate what we may have wished home actually was.

But you can’t really go back because you’re no longer who you were when you were originally there.

I appreciate all the homes I can never go home to again. The physical and the emotional. They were important parts of who I was, foundational building blocks of who I am. But who I will become? That needs me to allow myself to outgrow myself, to not let the lure of the certainty of the past prevent me from moving forward into the uncertainty of the future.

The past had its place, but it’s no place to live. It served its purpose, it was an important teacher, but holding on to our yesterdays weakens our grip on our tomorrows.

When we create an emotionally clear space to grow, it’s likely we will do so.

Photo by Victor Bouton on Unsplash

Things Don’t Last Forever On Their Own

I guess it was inevitable. But it didn’t have to be.

All of my life that barn was there. Until it wasn’t. A recent heavy wet snow proved too much for its weakened structure, slowly and consistently compromised by years of neglect to a point where it probably wasn’t worth the time and effort to save it.

Its demise seemed subtly unintentional. It was built to last, a solid foundation of granite supporting its timber frame posts and beams. It should have lasted forever.

But things usually don’t last forever on their own.

The rubble of the now-fallen barn offered me a stark reminder that the majestic things we’ve built in our own lives need the consistency of regular maintenance and pro-active care if we want them to last. Friendships, relationships, our health, and our emotional well being may all be built upon solid foundations, but indifference and complacency will surely weaken their structure, rendering them vulnerable and exposed to the inevitable storms life brings upon us.

If it’s worth saving, know it’s not going to save itself.

Photo by Chris Riggs on Unsplash

Peter Mis LivingHalfFull.com

Lessons From A Life Unfolding

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