skinned knees and saline

years ago my family went wave jumping. the water was cold and the day warm and we jumped and jumped until we were exhausted and our skin was blue. long after we should have called it a day my daughter tumbled and scraped her knee. badly. not thinking, i encouraged her to wade back into the water to clean the cut. i had momentarily forgotten that salt water and skinned knees do not make comfortable playmates and felt terrible as kaija’s knee stung.

i feel this way today. stung. cold and wet and like there’s salt in a wound. it’s been a difficult year. a hard week. and it’s only april. and tuesday. i have said stupid things. i have been reactive. i have shied away from difficult tasks and have been slow to do some of the things i know would help me immensely. i have disappointed people and myself.

at times i feel as though i have a skinned soul.

i know that you feel this way too. you tell me you do. over coffee. in my office. in the text that simply says “please pray.” as i walk by you at the grocery store at 1 a.m. sensing the weariness with which you move. you tell me in the music you make and the way in which you navigate the freeway. or your life.

and, yet,  due to boredom or habit or some unconscious drive, so often you tell me that your skinned soul ends up surfing social networks at the end of the day. this, i believe, is like pouring salt into an open wound. 

when our days have been fine and we look to social networks for entertainment or connection, the risk is slight. when we feel optimistic, content, and grounded we are often open to input of all types without using it as a comparative ruler. when we are low and self doubting, however, facebook too often becomes a place for observing the  “more attractive,” “better appointed,” and “more frequently liked” others in our friend lists. from these painful places we look especially carefully for evidence that supports our internal experience. feel like a loser? check out how many parties you weren’t invited to. feel angry? watch yourself drawn, like a shark to blood, to vitriolic posts. self loathing? facebook is the perfect place to find all kinds of new ways in which you just don’t measure up.

brene brown, author, researcher, and speaker, says this in her newest book daring greatly,

“scarcity is the ‘never enough’ problem. the word scarce is from the old norman french scars, meaning ‘restricted in quantity’ (c. 1300). scarcity thrives in a culture where everyone is hyperaware of lack. everything from safety and love to money and resources feels restricted or lacking. we spend inordinate amounts of time calculating how much we have, want, and don’t have, and how much everyone else has, needs, and wants.

what makes this constant assessing and comparing so self-defeating is that we are often comparing our lives, our marriages, our families, and our communities to unattainable, media-driven visions of perfection, or we’re holding up our reality against our own fictional account of how great someone else has it.”

it strikes me that every person using social networks would be benefitted by reading this last paragraph several times a day. seriously.

so today, exhausted and self doubting, with an evening before me and a skinned soul day behind me, i am given a choice. do i focus on my lack? do i set my awareness on that which i do not have? do i chose to enter a digital world where i am presented with highly filtered accounts of how great others have it (somehow i never see the posts where my friends are saying, “i feel so vulnerable and alone right now. it hurts.”)? will i allow plentiful airbrushed images and edited stories dictate the ruler by which i measure myself? or can i chose another way? can i let my wounds be for a bit? can i wait open until i find soothing silence, mindfulness, prayer, meditation, real conversation, connection, creativity...basically, water that doesn’t sting?

feeling felt

i am giving you all the heads up. mothers day is coming up and the women in your life know it. it amazes me how many ads and offers are coming my way one month in advance of may 12. today alone i received offers to send my mother on a “girlfriend get away” to las vegas, to order a “beautiful custom made photo book” for a mere $29, or to schedule botox injections for her. i’m not sure how to feel. my mom wouldn’t necessarily love any of these gifts.

days like mothers day are rarely easy for anyone. for women who wish they were mothers (or wish they were partnered) this day is often one that stings. for mothers whose families have decided that mothers day is simply a day manufactured by card and gift companies to make a profit, the day often falls short as their own wishes for recognition are buried under their family’s boycotting. for women whose partners take the stand that “she’s the kids’ mother not mine,” or who don’t have partners in the picture at all, the day often comes and goes with little to no fanfare.

what i am left with as i ponder the offers in my inbox and the complexity of emotions stirred by the upcoming day set aside to recognize a certain group of people, is the awareness that we all want to be celebrated. we all want to be seen. to be known. to be felt.

in the psychological literature on interpersonal neurobiology you will frequently find the term “feeling felt.” it was coined by daniel siegel (who, after mr. rogers, is my hero) in his book parenting from the inside out and refers, i think (please forgive me daniel if you ever stumble across this blog and i’ve misrepresented you), to the ability of one person to empathically and authentically encounter another person deeply. when one has felt felt they experience a profound sense of having been been with. the person who is feeling felt is touched somehow by the effort the other is making to tune into their thoughts, feelings, needs, and experiences. beyond just being “listened” or “attended” to, the “felt” person’s gut/soul/authentic self is met. 

i’m guessing that you can identify a time when you have either felt felt or not. mother’s day, father’s day, valentine’s day, birthdays are all days where people often feel far less than felt. instead they often feel forgotten, unknown (consider the non domestic mom who receives a blender for mothers day), or placated (think generic ecard sent at midnight). why is this?

i believe that one of the unfortunate consequences of our hyper-connected, everything-available-at-the-drop-of-a-hat zeitgeist is a lack of persistence in feeling others. rather than working hard to truly be with the important people in our lives, we substitute knowing alot about what they are doing. we troll facebook and instagram, we follow our friends and family’s tumblr pages, we send “i love you” texts and “i’m thinking about you” snapchats. we log on to send itunes gift certificates on our special days and type birthday messages into each others’ feeds. 

none of these forms of expressions are bad. they aren’t wrong. they have their place and serve the purpose of connectedness at differing levels. they are rarely, however, the kinds of expressions that lead one to feel truly felt. similarly, gifting your mom a girl friend get away would be exceedingly generous, ordering a professionally made book for her could bring her to tears. neither of these gifts, however, necessarily trumps much simpler gifts that might express your ability to “feel” your mom, to truly “be with” her in such a way that you experience her most authentic self. then honor it. or gift it. or celebrate it. and not just your mother’s...

the trouble is, our screen time is taken directly from the time we used to spend talking to each other, interacting with each other, and being engaged in our own imaginative processing (which included thinking about the important people in our lives). this has resulted in a decrease in our tolerance for awkward moments, pregnant pauses, and interpersonal experiences of all kinds. we just aren’t as experienced at being with people as we used to be. we hardly know how to “feel” ourselves let alone each other. we have fewer and fewer opportunities to practice the uncomfortable art of “being with” others through both comfortable and uncomfortable encounters. we have little need to rely on others around us since our technologies serve both as best friend and chief occupier of time and energy. who needs to borrow a cup of sugar (which involves the awkward opportunity to knock on a neighbor’s door, introduce one’s self, ask a favor, then return the favor later) when you can order a 5 pound bag from your iphone and have it in hand within the hour? we don’t have to expect much from others and hope others don’t expect much of us in return.

the way in which we encounter and honor others reflects this seismic change in how we relate. we send more “i love you” texts than we ever sent letters (or maybe said the words face to face) and yet how often do we “love” someone in person? we pound out multiple facebook birthday greetings without taking a moment or two to genuinely consider the person we are wishing well. we spend money at the gift card center online (or in the store) when a handwritten note, a considered knick knack, or a simple phone call might mean more to the recipient who wants to feel felt. who wants to be known. for who they are. as a person.

every day we are given opportunities to be with those we encounter. we can simply meet them, letting our own internal dialogue and comfort levels dictate the tone of the meeting or we can endeavor to “be with” or “feel” them, opening the door to deeper, more awkward, unknown, wonderful, anxious, exciting, and beautiful relatedness. a relatedness that groupon gifts might never touch. and what a relief...we don’t have to give “the perfect” gift when giving ourselves is enough.

the buzzing in our pockets

one of my favorite things to do when i speak to high schoolers is ask them to take their phones out (of their pockets, purses, and backpacks) and turn their ringers on and volume up. without doing this it’s easy to forget that they are being interrupted all the time. texts, facebook updates, instagram posts, and snapchats are coming in by the second, each one creating buzzes and pings in said pockets, purses, and backpacks. this isn’t limited to high school students. plenty of grandparents, middle schoolers, and folks in between live with the same reality.

so many of us have become (ever so subtly that we hardly knew it was happening) available for interruption 24 hours a day. we eat with our phones. we read on our phones. we play on our phones. we wait in line with our phones. we sleep with our phones. they never/rarely leave us.

i loved when phone lines came with busy signals. if you think about it, other than the ring, busy signals were the only indicators of any kind associated with the telephone. it was the sound that indicated that the person you were trying to reach was otherwise occupied. unavailable. busy.

few of us are ever unavailable anymore.

not only are we available to nearly anyone at nearly any time, we also have indicators for everything. when email arrives, when an app is updated, when someone posts to instagram, or tumblr, or facebook, or pinterest. while the busy signal used to indicate, “please wait. try again later.” our ears are now assaulted with calls for our attention. right now. while we’re doing ten other things. never mind that we’re already on the other line, responding to the ten texts that just came in, or trying to catch up on the emails that amassed since we last checked. what troubles me most is how attuned we have become to these digitally based message indicators and how willing we are to drop everything to attend to them.

it seems to me that the human body is designed with message indicators of all kinds. we yawn when we are tired. secrete tears when we feel sad. we have muscles that feel beautifully sore when we exert them and skin that turns red when we’ve been in the sun too long. our stomaches growl when we’re hungry and our hearts race when we’re afraid. or excited. or in love. these message indicators, however, rarely receive the kind of attention that the buzzing devices in our pockets do. we actually check our texts, our facebook accounts, our email. and respond. our bodies send messages, however, and we disregard them altogether. we caffeinate ourselves to chase away the yawn. we push past our exhaustion, stifle our tears, ignore the longings of our hearts. 

what would it cost, now and again, to turn off the message indicators buzzing in your pocket? to send the message, “try again later. i’m currently attending to something i am present with...myself. my friend. God. the beauty of the moment. nature.” to learn to be still and attentive enough to listen to the message indicators within? and to respond.

are we what we watch?

there are few things i enjoy more than engaging in someone’s story. one of the ways this happens for me is through documentary films which i go to see in the theater every chance i get.

last week, with a free evening before me, i checked what was playing in portland’s small, independent theaters. i found a film that was to screen only that evening, with the filmmakers on hand for a q and a afterward. four hours later i settled into my seat with nearly 50 other movie-goers to enjoy “arise,” a film made by women about women who are leading movements, small and large, to better the earth. what i noticed as i looked around the theater was plenty of grey hair, a significant lack of men, and far too many empty seats. when the final credits rolled, i found myself deeply moved by the stories i had just heard and the women i had just met.

following the question and answer session my husband and i ducked into the pizzaria next door for dinner. we sat at a counter which faced a window in which i watched the reflection of the television behind me. the images coming from the t.v. impacted me deeply as actresses and models showed photo after photo of themselves before and after using the skin care product line being advertised. for a full 40 minutes the infomercial flashed phone numbers, websites, and payment options among images of how terrible women look until they used said product. 

the stark contrast between the stories we’d just engaged could not be greater. in the documentary, women were exposed as being resourceful, smart, capable beings who, when they put their mind to something, change the world. in the infomercial, women were portrayed as being canvases, with confidence and happiness resulting from perfectly applied cosmetics.

to be fair, i have nothing against makeup (when it is ethically and fairly made and sold). i have fun with it myself and yet frequently leave the house without it. i have friends who sell it and friends who abhor it. my internal conflict that evening wasn’t related to makeup. it was, instead, related to the issue of how we spend our time.

while i was in the theater watching “arise,” thousands of others were spending the last weekend evening of spring break in other theaters taking in all manner of story. this particular week offered “spring breakers,” a film referred to as a victoria’s secret ad with violence and drugs targeted to the high school demographic. horror and action films were projected onto other screens. in homes, hours were being spent watching youtube and hulu, netflix, and all other manner of online video.

to be fair, i have nothing against mindless entertainment (when it is ethically and fairly made and sold). i need it sometimes. when life is too heavy and i’m too spent it is a gift to sit in a dark theater (or a darkened room with my computer) and be carried away into the land of a story on a screen.

what i wonder about, however, is how mindless our entertainment really is. are we truly unaffected by the images we passively observe? do the movies (or television shows or entire seasons) we watch make no impact on our internal worlds? our thought patterns? our beliefs? our values? or, instead, do the repetitive images (and language and emotion) that we subject ourselves to end up shaping us? is there merit to the phrase, “garbage in, garbage out?” 

one or two horror films are unlikely to create homicidal thoughts and tendencies. “spring breakers,” if viewed as a cautionary tale or a social commentary might even make a person think. youtube doesn’t necessarily make us stupid. the pattern of our viewing, however, and the accumulated amount of time we spend staring at images on screens does impact us. it just does. if it doesn’t, how can we claim that educational films are educational? if a daily dose of sesame street teaches, then so does a diet of “mindless” youtube and film.

it is not simple. in some instances the important messages of justice or redemption can be illuminated most effectively through stories including violence. historical reality exposes all manner of messy, horrific stories that deserve to be told. do we need, however, to take in huge quantities of sensationalist, evocative, sexual, violent, and demeaning images in order to be entertained? can these images ever truly be simply entertaining? or do they also inoculate us to feelings meant to be “message indicators” of sorts, intended to help us know when things are unjust, inhumane, or simply unfair. shouldn’t we want to look away from a rape or a murder or excessive bullying or a message being yelled at us that we can only be beautiful if we have perfect skin?

today i am asking myself how much time i give to that which entertains me. i am challenging myself to take in at least one quality, thought-enhancing screen based story for every one i take in that is either frivolous or indulgent. i am turning an analytic eye toward what i take in and wondering how the repeated habits of my entertainment choices shape who i am and what i think about. i would be honored to have you join me...and to hear your experiences as you do.

to check out the trailer and stories of arise, go to: http://www.arisethemovie.com

for a list of excellent films, documentaries, and television series', keep tabs on my professional facebook page (http://facebook.com/doreendodgenmageepsyd) where i'll be posting a list later this week. 

relational performance art

we all act differently when we’re being watched. it’s hard to find anyone who disputes this claim. social psychologists, marketing experts, your mom. they all agree. who and how you are in private differs from who and how you present yourself in front of an audience. even of one. i notice this about myself all the time. i don’t sing out loud or dance wildly in my car when i know that the driver next to me is turned in my direction. there are clothes i don’t go out to check the mail in. there are photos from entire decades of my life that will never be in frames.

when moving our bodies about in this world, it’s relatively easy to determine when we are being watched. when making our way past a full table to grab a seat in a restaurant. when arriving late to a meeting. when we’ve just done the most embarrassing thing ever. whatever that is.

when we notice an audience in these moments, we compensate quickly. we retreat. we blush. sometimes we even apologize. at times we anticipate being watched. we count on it. we prepare for it. we let it communicate to us. “you’re important.” “you’re ridiculous.” “you’re amazing.” “you aren’t seriously [wearing that] [doing that] [being the person you’re being] are you?” we seem to take in our observer’s responses as litmus tests about who we are.

as our lives become increasingly digitally centered, it seems to me as though we live more and more of them being watched. we think in status updates. we move through our days in tweets and tumblr posts. we strategically include flattering photos of ourselves on our profiles and similarly avoid the less than flattering stories we find ourselves central to. we check to see who is following us, who has liked our status’, or how many hits we’ve had in the week.

in so doing we treat both our lives and our relationships as performance art.

i believe that we do this for so many reasons. we are hungry for connection and at a loss for how to find it so we substitute evaluation (sometimes even assumed evaluation) for encounter. we are starved for self love and self knowing awareness but have developed neither so turn to self promotion to fill in the gaps. we are uncertain of how to feel about ourselves and don’t know how to anchor in God’s, our friend’s, and even our own sense of deep available value so we count up likes and hits and followers, figuring that those who are watching us will give us a clue as to how to behave. how to think. how to feel.

so today i will take a pause and i ask you to join me. when i want to hit “refresh” on the stats page of this blog, when i feel tempted to summarize my last hour or two in a quippy facebook status, when i watch someone else’s beauty/brilliance/success unfold on instagram and feel tempted to judge myself against it, i will stop. i will pause. i will look inside. i will be my own audience. and i will comfort the self that feels so compelled to perform and, instead, just be.

how i will honor trayvon martin

today marks the one year anniversary of the death of trayvon martin who was shot and killed while walking home from the store late at night.

i know that the sentence you just read is an oversimplification of a very complicated story. but in some ways, it’s not. isn’t every story complicated? isn’t every sentence a simplification of sorts?

when my children faced into middle school they began the arduous task of figuring out their own appearances and stylistic tastes. at the same time they made efforts to get past the externals that their peers presented in order to forge relationships that were more than skin deep.

adolescence is not a pretty time. neither is it simple.

a good friend once told me, “teenagers try on identities like we try on shirts.” that phrase has stuck with me. it is so true.

at that aforementioned middle school period i took my kids to a large bookstore. as we walked slowly through each section i suggested that they pick up a book and start reading. while they were more than happy to oblige among the harry potter and calvin and hobbes books they were less than willing to do so in the romance, history, or business sections. for the life of me i could not get them to open one of these books. 

it’s true i guess. we do judge the book by it’s cover. whether conscious or or not, our instinct tells us that there’s no way we’ll find something interesting to us in a book written by such and such, or covered in fleshy entwined bodies, or one that we find in the automotive section. we seem to be so sure of this.

the world of people and relationship are so different. 

and yet we approach them in much the same way.

we rarely linger in the “section” where we aren’t already comfortable. we don’t push ourselves past our go-to favorites to see if we might actually like science fiction, or history, or sodoku, or economics. we don’t read life of pi because it’s in the young adult section. neither do we read the wisdom of other religious traditions because we can’t find it among the shelves of our own. we assume we already know...the book’s cover informs us.

and yet it doesn’t.

trayvon martin was wearing a hoodie and was out late at night. he might even have talked tough. who knows, maybe he was trying on an identity like a shirt. adolescents are so that way. all tough and talk one minute and wanting to be tucked in the next. presenting a cover and yet secretly (or not so secretly) hoping you’ll see beyond it to who they really are and what they really need. especially since they don’t always know those things themselves.

we all pull figurative triggers everyday. we judge the inside by what we see on the outside. we are put off by what is presented so we never reach in to the insides where true connection, respect, and valuing takes place.

so today i will take risks and be warm and welcoming with the adolescents i encounter. i will not judge them by their covers. i will give them spacious benefit of the doubt and assume that they may be trying on shirts. the one that they wear tomorrow may be drastically different than the one that they wear today. i will remember that the thing that remains the same is their humanity (which i share) underneath. their bold, messy, hormonal, out of control, beautiful, brave, scared, trying-to-figure-it-all-out humanity. and i will not pull the trigger...even if their humanity scares me. for perhaps there is something to be learned by opening a book with a different kind of cover.

redeeming the screen

45 years ago today “mr. roger’s neighborhood” debuted on pbs. i was 2. while i don’t remember the actual first show, i do remember watching “the neighborhood,” in black and white, on a regular basis. when i was very young i believed that mr. rogers could hear and see me and i answered his questions with great intention and reverence. it was easy to imagine i was being heard because mr. rogers always paused after he asked a question and he always listened actively. he was engaged. he looked into the camera and held the gaze. he left space for answers. he created conversation. he didn’t need to fill the space. he fed his fish in silence and took his time doing it.

45 years later, space feels hard to find. silence is sparce. slowness has been overtaken by fast-paced constant movement and it feels like no image emanating from a screen listens. eye contact? what is that?

mr. roger’s original vision for a television program grew out of his frustration and disappointment with the seeming irreverence of his television peers in creating work for the new medium. television was overpopulated, in his opinion, with people throwing pies in one another’s faces. “smart” and respectful material was lacking and the only way he could live with himself was to take a swing at providing programming that spoke to and called out the very best in his audience. he did this by being counter cultural, by offering thoughtful discourse, and providing tools for both the intellectual and emotional needs of his audience.  he didn’t shock anyone into paying attention. he didn’t yell. he didn’t use single second visual bytes to keep his viewers from looking away.

so today, why not honor mr. rogers (and the many others like him who care about the quality and content of that which is presented on screens) by, somehow, redeeming your screen time. why not switch out a smart, point of view short film for your typical sitcom (http://www.pbs.org/pov/video/search.php?search_type=type&offset=16#film-list). or take time for a beautiful, complex, or at least authentically told, documentary when you’d typically watch the news (for instance: searching for sugarman, afghan star, paul williams still alive, bill cunningham new york, a man named pearl, or touch the sound...and if you’d like more...email me and i’ll be happy to send you a list). how about listening to a story at story corp instead of spacing out to youtube (http://storycorps.org). possibly swap a slow, quality classic for your next mindless adventure or a slapstick musical for your next romcom. or, if you want to kick it really old school, check out some of mr. rogers’ best episodes, field trips, and other highlights at http://pbskids.org/rogers/videos/index.html. becoming mindful and intentional about what you are taking in can do nothing but improve the quality of that which you see on screens.

few will argue with the reality that we are largely what we ingest. once, after a day of drinking pepto bismol, someone i know ate some oreos. when he threw up, the pink and brown told the story.

if we were to take a look at what the images we ingest create within us, what would we find? would we find respect, thoughtfulness, and love or would we find capricious lack of care, violence of every kind, and pies thrown in faces? humor doesn’t have to be base to be funny. intensity does not require beyond the pale explicitness to be communicated and intimacy does not demand skin to be effectively demonstrated. by taking responsibility for that which we watch we can change our insides which motivates external change of all sorts. and this is how movements are begun...with small acts, taken by individuals, lived out boldly into our communities and neighborhoods. where we can be still. where we can be engaged. where we can listen and hold a gaze. where we can see...and be seen.