trust and deceit

After recent events, I began to ponder on the idea of how important trust is in a relationship. It is by far one of the necessary foundations of success that allows growth. Trust is what makes you feel safe and allows you to begin to open up. It is something that forms out of positive actions and faithful occurrences.
But the point is, it grows. It is not convinced, and especially not convinced to make the other party feel they should want to be a part of the relationship.

I know for myself there have been several times I have been in situations where the other side of the relationship felt a need to force a feeling of trust; a forced assurance if you will, and early on for that matter.

When these instances occurred, deep down, in the pit of my gut, that little voice began to whisper.
I did not listen.

Perhaps I wanted to humor the situation. Again.
Perhaps I wanted to see how far one would go to convince me it was a good idea, that I needed to change, or even better to convince me that I needed them.

So it came. And it went; the other individual that is.
The little voice never left. The little voice was whispering the fine line of forced trust and deceit. Deceit is making someone believe something that is not true. Deceit is lying.

I did not cry this time. I only looked back with an ounce of remorse and vanity and grinned.

I walked out in the open air and I listened to the little voice, my soul, as it reminded me who I am and all I have accomplished, where I have been and where it is I am going. It reminded me what I knew all along, that I do not need someone there to feel good about me.

At the end of the day you have to trust yourself.
Trust yourself to go with your gut.
Trust yourself to have faith in you.
Trust yourself to always always remember, you decide who and what makes you feel what way.
Trust that if someone feels the need to make you feel as though you need them,

Their insecurity is at play to bring you down in any way.
Their own troubles invite your doubt for fear that you can live without.
But live without is what you prefer, for its honor in life you deserve.

New Year…New Life?

As I have been soaking in all the hype about yet another year beginning, I have to admit I have been in the zone to make resolutions and goals, better myself, grow my relationships, and to further my career. I have been very intuned with it as well making checklists each day and following through. However, as I smugly checked another accomplishment off my today to do list of the new year, I could not help but wonder… why do we need a new year to have a new life?
Why can’t we have a new week each week and fist pump up the enthusiasm with the endless possibilities?
Why can’t we make a reason to meet up and celebrate all the potential changes life has to offer?
Why can’t we eat blackeyed peas everyday? …ok that one we can throw out
But in all seriousness, why don’t we start giving ourselves a reason to celebrate life versus giving a date a reason for us to celebrate?

Carpe Diem y’all
© Jennifer Lee Dethloff

Feeling Time

It is nice out at the park this evening. The trees leaves create a canopy that begins to spin slowly if you stare long enough upward. The crickets just started singing as if in unison to welcome the still distant but inevitable sunset. The days are long this time of year. I wonder if the crickets comprehend time or if it is just a feeling that surges over the population to commence. If I was blind I wonder if I could tell when it was growing dark. I wonder if I could feel dusk. Would I even care to know? or would I only care to feel…

I never promised you a rose garden?

I began to think upon the phrase “I never promised you a rose garden” and its insinuation towards the idea that in a relationship, one is stating that I never promised you that it was going to be perfect. I began to wonder… maybe it is a rose garden that we are promising after all, and in any relationship for that matter.

As I thought of the aspects of a rose garden and the aspects of relationships, I began to see more similarities than differences.

Growth must occur to find who we are and what we are and to thus accept others in their truest form.
Beauty can be found in both tangible and intangible aspects as growth evelops, wilts, and fades to the beauty of laughter lines and misty eyes of a delicate dried decomposing memory.
Thorns are invasive to prick your soul in times of confusion and conflict.
And change. Change is inevitable.

So maybe we do promise rose gardens. They just happen to be more realistic in time.

Grace is Gray

All my life, and now so more than ever I have lived with the necessity of black or white, all or nothing, life or death, having to know, having to understand, having to be one step ahead.

I just might be the most stubborn person you have ever met. I prefer the term driven.

Some might say that these aspects may be what has pushed me towards achievement and success, and they might be right. Hell I might even agree with them. But I also might have to admit that I may have deprived myself of many content moments by living this way.

They say that Grace is grey. I am not exactly sure who they is but I believe they are on to something. I believe that being able to find enjoyment in living in the Gray, in the middle, or limbo, just might be the ticket to true inner bliss.

Before you ask, no you cannot buy this ticket on Ticketmaster, Cheaptickets, or for Godsake Craigslist. You have to create this ticket yourself actually I believe.

This ticket may be rather easy to come by for some. In fact I find this very true for the less complex thinkers. I am not saying by any means that this means they are less smart, just less analytical. They do not over think or over analyze the small imbedded smiles of life, the hot chocolate that is just the right temperature on the first day of winter or the spending family time or lack there of.

It is the over analytical thinkers like myself that insist on making this ticket out of paper mache with glitter and a light system that blinks. It is the people with a mixed left and right brain that find trouble just stopping to catch that hot chocolate and even if they get it wonder how many calories are in it and if it will affect the next photoshoot. That wonder what they should be doing instead of sitting useless around the fireplace with family or that wonder if they will ever EVER slow down enough to have a family and if so when? with who? where?

Yes, this ticket, this bliss, this ability to just BE is quite difficult to come by for the analyticals.

The ability to just BE is and has been an unfathomable concept for me for some time. I get it and understand the concept but find it nearly impossible to stop and smell the flowers if you will. Then I realized, all the time I allow my brain to run on its non stop analytical path to eternity, I could spend, content, not complacent, but content.

Over analyzing some situations can be good, can be great in fact. However, I have come to realize that over analyzing your life is pointless. After all life is meant to be lived.

Perhaps I will start to make that ticket. Perhaps my fellow thinkers out there you should as well. After all the ticket to contentment starts with a decision to let yourself be content, be happy, be you.
Perhaps it is about time to
“Let it be, Lord, Let it be”.

And just see how a day turns to grey
when Grace from God lights the way.

© Jennifer Lee Dethloff 11/2009

Fall Back or Slide Forward

,

The recent time change got me to thinking about falling back. The extra hour seems nice but yet tends to affect our mental schedules in one way or another.

The literal idea of falling back though, hindsight if you will, is a subject often evident in all or our lives in some way or another. Perhaps it is a positive hindsight, a haunting hindsight, or an unexplored hindsight.

Whatever view it may be, our lives are full of experiences, occurences, feelings, and people. However it is the reflection on these aspects that make them truly precious. The intertwined lessons in our everyday lives.
Reflection is key to understanding who we are as beings. The secret though is not to dwell on the past and especially not to dwell on mistakes. It is simply wasted energy for a debt that has been paid in full when you realized your mistake and took it into account.

Realize that by making mistakes we create our fate, and by learning from our mistakes we give light to a future of polished possibilities.

Often times as individuals we lose the idea of the wonder, the preciousness and the possibilities of life. We get caught up in our job, our future, our car note, our schooling, our plans etc and fret over: what if I mess up this account? When will I get that dream job? How will I pay the car note? what if I made a bad grade?
One day I was guilty of one of these rounds of negative what if? self worry when a wise man told me an invaluable lesson, and I quote:

“Dont take yourself and life too Damn seriously!”
~Don Doyle

I was taken a back at the time. I mean after all he once was a Southern Baptist minister. But I took it in a little. and then a little more. But then one day, I laughed. I laughed so hard it hurt. I learned to say “Oh well!”. I learned to truly believe what is meant to be will be.

So take chances, make mistakes…. Mistakes are what makes life worth living. Mistakes are what make us who we are in this life.

Live. Learn. And by all means let the Universe play,
because one sweet hour could be the end of your last eternal day.

As for me:

“I intend to face my demise by sliding into home plate, martini in one hand, body completely used up screaming, ‘Yee haw, Honey! What a ride!” ~Woody Richey

© Jennifer Lee Dethloff 11/2009

Relationships as Investments

As I was doing some insatiable reading on investments, all the different types and options, it occurred to me how much they had in common with relationships. After all, a relationship is an investment of an individual’s time and money as is an investment in choosing, buying and following stock.

When it comes to relationships, one generally finds another individual they like, are intrigued by, or hope proves beneficial; as is the same in choosing stock. Both individuals in the relationship must invest themselves to make it work, thus forming a couple, or in the stock world, a corporation. As the couple grows closer and gets to know each other more and invests more, their intimacy grows, as does retained earnings in a corporation, well hopefully in this economy.
The point is that as this relationship grows and eventually changes and as they all do, we are often faced with many options, many choices.
If a company continues to flourish and produce revenue you may get paid in dividends.
In a relationship you may get paid in sex, marriage, having kids, moving in together etc.

As time passes, there are often moments when a relationship may get rocky. Maybe you have lost that passion or began fighting. You may cover it up with smiles or in an investment world split your stock to make you look more appealing. Perhaps you will work it out and continue to grow learning more and respecting the other more along the way.

But what if the corporation fails? What if it goes south and there is nothing you can do about it or have no way to turn it around or change the fact that it is inevitably over, at an end.
In life things end and you often cannot change that fact. We push forward as much as we can and keep playing the hand we are dealt because after all that is life. However its that part of life, relationships, that makes it often seemingly almost unbearable to keep on playing sometimes. After all what if you invested all of you, and you wake up to find yourself yet again alone. Maybe the other investor fell out of love, or passed away, or cheated, or just left. As much as I have tried and I am sure many of you out there have also wished you could at some point or another, when it comes to relationships, you just cannot liquidate your heart.

© Jennifer Lee Dethloff 10/2009

Compassion and Humanity

I am sure everyone probably several times has encountered an individual or group of individuals that has or have done something to you that hurt your feelings, upset you, made you mad, made you cry, or simply made you perplexed with the question of “Who does that?” and “Why?”

Perhaps someone lied to you, or cheated on you, or hit you, or was rude to you, or stole from you, or spread a rumor, or made fun of you, or even just never gave you a chance.

Often times it is their intimidation by someone pretty, handsome, or successful, but the most of all intimidating characteristic to these types of people is that of someone who is happy.

I have found the most unhappy people will go out of their way to bring others down to their sad level. Though they often do not realize it, they unknowingly rationalize that they are unhappy, so why should you be allowed to be happy?

The answer?

Because you deserve to be happy. If you let these types of individuals affect your feelings and joy of your day, then they have won. They have won a dinky prize from a 25 cent vending machine that will continuously fade, while you my friend have lost your joy and your smile, and a smile is a hell of a thing to lose.

A smile has the power to change the world. A smile is a beacon of light in a dreary haze and a provider of warmth on the coldest of days.

So even when you are faced with the cruelness of others and their insecurities, instead of retaliating in the same childish and sad way they acted, how about we counteract it with an act of kindness.
We have all heard of “pay it forward”. It does not have to be a big act, but an act in itself is a step toward humanity. You could buy someone in line behind you a coffee, or perhaps share your unbrella to a wettening walker.

Even if your act of kindness is just to genuinly smile at a perfect stranger…you never know what effect that may have on that individual. You never know what someone might be going through, and though you may not have an understanding compassion, you at least have the compassion and relation of humanity.

And most importantly you still have your smile and your joy of that day.
After all,
“It is because Humanity has never known where it was going that it has been able to find its way.” – Oscar Wilde

© Jennifer Lee Dethloff 10/2009

Light

I saw the sunrise and sunset today, each more beautiful for different reasons.  It is amazing to me sometimes how things seem so terrible and upsetting as though you cannot bring yourself to go on and yet the sun continues inevitably in its constant path. 

When things get hard and the world seems to grow darker, maybe we should think of the sun and know that tomorrow is another day; that no matter how bad life seems, or if your heart feels scared and broken, or if tears will not stop.  Tomorrow is inevitable. 

Try greeting it with a thank you, a blessing if you will.  Look at the opportunity in the light, whether it is yellow, orange, or pink,and embrace it.  You never know when your sun will set.

So live as if there is no tomorrow and love as though you may never feel that way again.  If you love someone, tell them.  If you miss someone call them.  If you push these opportunities away, you may wake up one day wishing you had given more. 

Live.  Love.  and by all means when life seems like it is all out of light.  Light a candle.  Do not wait for someone to do it for you, or your candle may never get lit.

© Jennifer Lee Dethloff 9/2009

“Knowledge as Ammunition”

I had a professor once that emphasized the importance of knowledge in life.  He urged his students to obtain knowledge with the means that surround you and use it as your competitive advantage.  Knowledge, he said, was the key to success.  Knowledge, he said, was power. 

            In our society we often take knowledge for granted.  College itself is often paid for through parents, scholarships, grants etc. 

What about the other venues such as the free newspapers handed out by the somewhat seemingly abrasive individual outside your nearest subway?  How many times do we look the other way and brush past in our busy path to get to a job? 

What if…What if…that newspaper was in one of the various third world countries?  There would be a scramble to obtain that paper not to neglect it.  There would be joy upon holding that frail crisp product of information in hand to simply find the gratification in the few words that might be recognized, and there would be continuous attempt to discover the rest. 

This quest for knowledge, this desire, and this key to success that we often take for granted is at every venue in some way.  The Internet alone offers a plethora of insight and not to mention, when is the last time you have been to the library to open the yellowing pages of a book?  The key, the insight, the knowledge is all around us. 

© Jennifer Lee Dethloff

Mark Twain wrote: ”A person who won’t read has no advantage over a person who can’t.”

So open a book, open a paper, but most of all open your mind to knowledge as ammunition.

 

© Jennifer Lee Dethloff