Month: September 2018

As my husband and I stared into a rectangular hole in the ground, our tour guide, Manar, explained that the space was formerly used to hide sacred artifacts so they wouldn’t be stolen.  Because they had been there for such a long time, the space itself was believed to have retained some of the power of the contents, so when they were recovered, the hole became a wishing well.  The only condition was that the wish could not be shared until it came true.  I thought for a long time, and told my husband that I couldn’t think of anything to wish for because being here was my wish.  I’m more than a tourist in Egypt, and Manar is more than a tour guide, though I doubt she knows it.  Throughout the day she dropped tiny bits of wisdom that connected the past to the present, the near to the far, and me to myself.  Gestalt.

Wishes don’t make themselves come true.  Wishers do.  I like to think of unfulfilled wishes as pending.  Here are some thoughts.

• Wishes pending expiration are similar to clothes that have gone out of style but are still in your closet. It’s probably best to just let them go. Humans get sentimental about their investments, whether they are in time, money, hope, or love. I have had a lot of clients who stayed in bad relationships because of the years they had already invested, just wishing for a change.
• Wishes pending refinement require a look at the deeper outcome. If you wish to find a partner, for instance, you have expectations of what having a partner means.  A person who is desperate to  find a partner may be really wishing for a sense of security or self-worth.  Those can be developed without a partner.
• Wishes pending a context are wishes that don’t have a place to come true. I once had a client who longed for a healthy relationship. He asked me to check out his profile for Match.com.  The quality he listed as most desirable in a partner was honesty.  His therapy session that day focused on why he himself had lied about his own age in the profile.  Clearly, he did not have a healthy space within himself for a relationship.
• Wishes pending ownership are either wishes to please others or wishes for others to please you. If you wish to make a lot of money to keep your wife happy, you probably need a new wife.  I met a parent recently who wished for her daughter to become a nurse.  The daughter had a passion and a skill for music.  The mother, the daughter, and the relationship between them was in jeopardy.

All of these pending wishes call back to me another of Manar’s droplets of wisdom.  If you are sincere in your wishes, they will come true.  If you truly wish for something, commit to it. Take ownership, take action, and make a space for your wish to come true.

 

 

 

 

I’ve been in Tuscany for a week now – teaching and touring.  But today I am on the train to Rome.  Everyone in my pod is snoozing.  From time to time I give my husband a little poke to show him an old city hanging from the side of a hill.  Some of the hills are held up by what seem to be mile high walls.  I wonder how they were built.

Even though this is technically a work trip, it has been joyful travelling with 10 students from Beacon College.  We walk everywhere in Prato, and around every corner seems to be a shop tucked into a space the size of my bedroom.  Most are packed with a few designer items – textiles, shoes, bags, and jewelry.  The restaurants are also small spaces.  The food is sumptuous at every place I have eaten.  The tomatoes are red and meaty, the pasta is al dente, and water is fizzy.  In Florence I found a childhood favorite on the menu — tripe.  It’s not for the faint of heart.

The food in Florence wasn’t the only call back to my childhood. I was the nerd of my time, and I spent a lot of time at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum. I did a lot of homework in the room of Greek and Roman artifacts.  Florence, of course, is the real deal, and at every turn there is a church with a story told in the statuary.

Pesa and Venice are on the itinerary, but, I digress….No, I mean I really digress.  This train to Rome is taking us to the plane to Cairo. Tomorrow – the pyramids.   I’m sure I will have a lot to say about that.  Here comes my stop.  Ciao!

 

 

 

I was noticing today how mindfully the grandchildren are being raised. I got a very good sense of the big picture.   Parenting should go beyond managing the moment.  It should prepare  children for the future.  Whether you are raising your own children or refurbishing your ravaged inner child,  childhood lessons matter.

If you had a perfect childhood, you undoubtedly got a lot of useful information about how to live your life.  Your childhood memories are a library of life lessons, but they are only memories.  If your childhood wasn’t so perfect, you may have missed out on some important lessons.  You can’t re-do childhood, but you can always get the lessons you missed, correct any misinformation, and create new memories to better guide you through life.

Building a person is like building a house.  The integrity of the foundation determines the stability of the house.  If a few blocks are missing from the foundation, you can still build, but over time the weakness will show itself in a sagging floor, a whistling window, a crack in the plaster, or a leaking roof.  It isn’t necessary to tear down the whole house to correct the problem.  All it takes is to fortify the foundation and fix the damage.  Of course, if you do nothing, the house may fall down on its own.

I once asked a client if he learned everything he needed to learn from his parents.  He said he didn’t have any idea what he was even supposed to have learned, so I made a list for him.  It quickly became a part of my regular practice to use this list as a guide for clients who were flailing and for parents who were failing.  

Here is the list:

                                          Essential Childhood Lessons

Tolerate frustration                       Solve problems                      Make decisions

Read others                                  Calm yourself                          Grieve losses

Comfort yourself                          Take risks                                 Accept defeat

Set boundaries                             Ask for what you need            Disagree

Identify and express feelings       Accept compliments               Accept criticism

Compromise                                Give support to others            Seek support from others

Think for yourself                        Appreciate yourself                  Enjoy others

Be alone                                       Appreciate beauty                    Say goodbye

Connect with others                    Practice and master tasks         Settle Conflict

Learn from others                         Make amends                          Forgive

If you would like to share how you learned any of the lessons, or how you teach them to your children, please post a reply.  (I’m pretty sure that any one of these items could provide grist for the blog mill).

Nicki