Are you optimistic?

Photo credit : me.me

According to Google/Oxford languages :
An OPTIMIST is a person who tends to be hopeful and confident about the future or the success of something.
“only an eternal optimist could expect success”
Merriam-Webster says that a REALIST is a person who recognizes what is real or possible in a particular situation : one who accepts and deals with things as they really are.

One would think that the two could not possibly go together – especially when considering harsh realities – how could there still be hope?

Apparently they do!

A couple of years ago a friend came to me for advice. She chose to ask me because she wanted ‘the dream’. She was seeking a purely optimistic perspective – ‘of course it will work! Go for it! You’ll be a great success!’
She relied on the fact that I am always an encouragement, and always hopeful. She relied on my positive energy.
She probably should not have led with, ”I want to ask you about something, because I know I can trust you to be honest!”

This is not to say that I am dishonest in my encouragement or hopefulness.
Repeating the words of a very good friend, again, ”We interpret things from where we are. One person, using their window to the world will see it/you as this, and another will view it/you completely differently.’’

My ‘window of being an encouragement’ is predominantly based on, ”be who you needed when you were younger”. And… I’ll add… who I need in my life now as well.

I find that for me personally, my need for encouragement from others usually appears at the point where I have already heard enough reality. It comes at a time where I’ve already received input into something, sometimes from people who weren’t even asked to provide input 😛 , and it’s all just been so negative… to the point that it actually limits my potential in unrelated areas because it starts to affect my mindset in general – for example : While I see realistically that ‘those people’ are right, and it won’t work, their voices have been so loud and ‘so much’ that I start feeling that nothing will work.

And I find myself seeking encouragement in other areas, just to remind me that ‘one failure’ is not ‘total failure’. That I’ve still got this 😉 – just without ‘that’.

More often than not, the people who turn to me for encouragement seem to have reached that exact same point. They’ve been slammed with so much negativity that they just desperately want to hear something positive! And, to be honest, if I can find nothing positive about whatever it is that they are asking, or struggling with…. I’ll admit it : I deflect. I try to distract from their reality, to remind them of the goodness that still exists.

I am probably wrong.

But in my personal experience, I have found that the result is usually this : the problem/reality still exists, and is still devastating, but they find an extra ounce of strength… and as small as it is, there is a definite increase in their ability to cope.

MY personal experiences and findings are probably a psychologists nightmare! 😛

Back to my friend….
She had specifically triggered the honesty in me… not the deflection. I owed it to her to be realistic. My response was hesitant – I carefully considered each word before I spoke it!
And afterwards we were in tears – with laughter!!!
She taught me something important that day! I learned that it is possible to be an Optimistic Realist!
That the two really can be combined!
I choose to put the word ‘optimistic’ first though, because I definitely lean more towards it…
Despite some of my realities, and despite knowing that the arguments some make that ‘it is impossible’ are true,
”Hope Springs Eternal” in my heart! For better, or for worse.

And I was reminded the other day that this has always been a part of ‘who I am’. The Facebook Memory that reminded me made me smile, and cry.
I smiled because I needed that reminder so desperately, at a time when my reality was overwhelming me.
And I cried because I miss this particular friend so very much – I lost her to cancer.
The memory?

I am not saying that being the way I am is an entirely good thing 😛
And over the years, many have tried to change this part of me – and I am well aware of ‘what a bad quality it can be’, because they have told me so! On numerous occasions! Ha!

But personally? From my window? It keeps me strong – in the face of harsh realities, it is what pulls me out of bed in the morning. So it really can’t be all that bad for me 😉

So… if you need a little bit of ‘deflected encouragement’… hit me up… I’m your girl 😉
I’ll even do it honestly and not deflect, if you so wish… but I’ll have to talk slowly 😛 😉

Thank you for reading,
Meg x

Advertisement

A bicycle and a boat

Picture it: a little girl with freckles on her face, her hair in pigtails sporting pink bows (ugh! 😛 ), pedalling as fast as her little legs will allow along a long straight, on her red BMX bicycle.
Now picture the same little girl, only five years later. Her hair loose in the wind as she ‘tears up the tar’, racing against the two boys who are along for her afternoon bicycle outing.

As I am sure you have guessed, the little girl was me. When I was a child, it was still safe for us to ride our bicycles in the street. And we took advantage of every opportunity to do so! Ha ha!
In the area I grew up, we were a crew of six, when we could all be together. Four boys, two girls. I still remember every side road, every shortcut, and every little bump in the road.

I also remember the tree at the bottom of a small hill when I was nine years old. 😛

It was a warm Saturday afternoon, but a gentle, cool breeze prevented it from being too uncomfortable. I had waited out the required 45 minutes after lunch, set by my mother, and had just surfaced from an underwater length of the pool, when another freckled face appeared before me, giving me such a fright. Brown eyes laughed at me as I clutched my little chest, and my friend, Brian, asked, ”Wanna go for a ride?”

We cycled to two other ‘crew members’ houses, but neither one was home. We went past the old couple sitting on their verandah having their tea, but we didn’t stop to chat that day, just waved at them and cruised by 😉 We rode to the park (in those days they still existed and were fully functional, and they were safe too) and see-sawed, had a swinging competition, and ended with trying to see how fast we could make the roundabout go! A few sips of water, and a few biscuits from Brian’s backpack, and we were on the road again, this time home to my place for a quick swim before Brian cycled home to his own house.

We got to the junction of the road with the small hill, and Brian stopped. I stopped next to him, and grinned. I waited as he rode a little further, then turned. Perched on his bicycle, he rubbed his hands together, and then gripped his handlebars tightly. Then his legs pedalled furiously and I whooped as he made it around the bend at the bottom of the hill, skidding to a stop. I clapped my hands in delight, and he beckoned to me that it was my turn.

There’s very little fear in youth, ha ha! I repeated his process. And I have no idea how… but I got a speed wobble (technical term : a quick oscillation of primarily just the steerable wheel of a vehicle). I ended up skidding and falling in a most ungraceful manner, landing against the big tree at the bottom – no bend for me. Brian dropped his bicycle and came running, concern on his face. I looked down at my bloody knee, and the scrapes and blood on my forearm, and had no reaction. Brian lifted me off the ground, and I tested my legs and the mobility in my arms. Then I dusted myself off, and asked him, ”Oh man! Did you see that?” We both burst out laughing. And then we pushed our bicycles back up the hill, and up the road to my house. We didn’t get to swim – my mother was furious, ha ha!

Speed wobbles happen. And so do ’emotional wobbles’.

Life happens, and sometimes there’s that overwhelming moment when it has all happened at once, and it’s all been rather negative, and it causes a bit of a wobbly in our emotions. Not a full on crash… but more of a ‘stop and breathe, think, retreat for a bit’…. and I like to add, ”and if you can find a steady supply of chocolate, it helps!”
Some emotional wobble’s can even leave us feeling like we’re bleeding. Those are the worst kind. Those moments are the ones where it’s important to have someone to step in and lift you off the ground – wait while you dust yourself off, and then remind you what it is to laugh!
Reality is though that sometimes there isn’t anyone to help you get up. And then these next two things are very important to remember :

It is not only okay to have that wobble… it is also okay if you take some time to recover, in whatever way you need to. For some, it is escape into a book or a few movies that distract them from their reality; for others, it might be a long lunch with a group of uplifting friends, where you all ‘don’t talk about it‘, but find laughter in something entirely different.
This is not about ‘ignoring it and maybe it will go away’. It’s just about building strength emotionally so that you can try and deal with it when you’re not feeling so wobbly. (Well, that’s what it is like for me, anyway.)
The other thing to remember is that nothing is permanent… not even the seemingly never-ending issues you might be facing. ”The only thing constant is change”.
Yes, the light at the end of the tunnel may well be another train coming BUT who knows what will come after? 😉

You guessed it! I had a rather serious wobbly the other day, ha ha! I retreated, to try and balance my emotions (by reading a book about black ops specialists and assassins, ha ha ha!). Interestingly enough, it reminded me that life really does seem to be full of plot twists – but experience has shown me that they are not always bad. There cannot be magnificent views from stunning mountain tops, without there also being valleys – some for just plodding along; some with rough terrain and very little sunshine. But if we stop in our tracks in the valley, how will we see the view from the mountain? And how will we get to the next mountain top, which may have an even better view than the one that preceded it?

I’ll close with this image I saw on Facebook :

As I look at the world as a whole, I can see that we’re in one huge storm – but the repercussions differ from country to country.
As do our boats. I found myself so very grateful for my canoe! Yes, sometimes my soul may feel like it’s drowning… but I have a canoe! I get to feel the storms differently to those who have neither a canoe nor a yacht!
Some days it feels like I am stuck at the train station, waiting for my ship to come in 😛
BUT AT LEAST I HAVE A CANOE!
It is important for me (and maybe you) to remember that some people don’t even have that! And maybe there isn’t space in my canoe… but I sure can reach out a hand of kindness and clutch theirs, and try and help them stay afloat!

I hope you all have a great week ahead! Thank you for reading!
Meg ❤

Getting busy living

I woke to screaming, and sat up in a daze. Then there’s a blank.
It was difficult to open my eyes – the vision in my right seemed blurred. The sky was above me, grey, and I am sure there was a light drizzle (but that may be because before all this happened it had been raining). My friend was next to me, saying “Hold on, Meg. The ambulance is coming. Please be okay.”
I remember that my chest hurt – it was really sore to breathe. I tried to take in my surroundings, but it was just too much effort.
I remember gasping out, in stammered breaths, “It hurts to breathe. I think I’m going to go to sleep.”
The next 24 hours were a haze – very brief moments of memory that can be recalled when I talk about it. The rest? Things that those who were there have told me.
I was wearing all my favourite clothing items that day – they cut them all of me.

I had been asleep, on the journey home after a weekend away with my friends, in the back of a truck (under the canopy). It was four days after my 18th birthday. The truck lost control on the icy road – I was later told that it was due to driver negligence – and hit rolled a few times, landing on the edge of a cliff. For whatever reason, even after the canopy had been flung off, I had remained in the truck bed and was only thrown out just before it came to a stop. (Thinking back now, if I had been thrown out earlier, maybe I would have been crushed and dead, instead of very much alive, as I am today?)
My body was broken, my face cut up, and I was bruised all over – and yet the mirror in my bag was in tact. It hadn’t even cracked!?!?

I was in hospital for 15 days, and brought home in an ambulance because I still couldn’t walk. I’ve healed well, other than the scar tissue and pain that comes with cold and rainy days – and yet I LOVE those type of days 😉
I had a long list of injuries, but the ones that matter for the purposes of what I am actually wanting to share on my blog today, were the injuries to my ‘arms’. I broke my right collarbone in two places, and my left wrist. This means that on top of everything else, I couldn’t use my arms.
Still bedridden and healing up, I became incredibly bored. My pile of unread books  were calling me, but I wasn’t able to hold them or turn pages. So my brother provided me with a bunch of movies, the next best thing. Much to my mothers horror, in this collection was the movie Shawshank Redemption. And I watched it at least twenty times.

It’s a difficult movie to watch – so much sadness and a bit of violence, and scenes that leave you feeling a little ill to your stomach. But buried in that movie are so many little inspirational things that it makes it very much worth watching, if you can tolerate and get through the rest.

Let me set the scene for those of you who haven’t watched the movie – and refresh the memory of those of you who have.

Andy (played by Tim Robbins) has been convicted of killing his wife and her lover. Surprisingly, he’s probably the only man who winds up in that prison who is actually innocent. It’s not easy, and he definitely suffers. One day, out in the yard, he’s having a conversation with a new ‘friend’ he has made, named Red – played by Morgan Freeman. They start talking about what they would do if they got out, and for a man who has been institutionalized for a very long time, it is no surprise that Red fears that he may not survive on the outside.

It’s Andy’s part of the conversation that made an impact on me though.
He describes how he may as well have pulled the trigger – that he had loved his wife so much and yet pushed her away, and that had ultimately caused her to be in a place that had caused her death. He talks about being caught in the path of a tornado, and how he didn’t expect the storm be lasting as long as it is.
And then he begins to talk about his dream : one day, when he gets out, he’s going to go down to Mexico and open a small hotel on the beach – the Mexicans say the Pacific has no memory. And that’s how he wants to live out the rest of his days – in a warm place with no memory.

Bearing in mind that Red is pretty much his only friend in those dark, dismal walls; you’d expect his response to be supportive. But sometimes our reality is just so dark that we can’t see any light – and when we do see a light in a tunnel it’s usually another train coming.

So Red tells him he has a silly pipe dream, and that Mexico is out there, and Andy is in here, and he should forget about it.

Andy’s response is :
”Yeah, right. That’s the way it is. It’s down there and I’m in here. I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living or get busy dying.”

And that’s the truth. We can either truly live life, or just wait to die.

Sometimes life is hard, and it can feel like we’re imprisoned by its harshness, circumstances and negativity. My country, my town, my immediate surroundings are in crisis at the moment. It scares and saddens me, because I have a passion for people and I see past how things are directly impacting ‘me and my kids’. I carry a weight for those around us too. It’s not a burden that debilitates, but it definitely causes crying in my heart and soul, and pushes a button inside me to ‘act’. I don’t quite know how to explain it, so I may take some heat for the way I’ve said it.

I often joke that I am a ‘Prisoner of Hope’. I still have dreams despite the reality. And something inside of me constantly lives in hope. I don’t know what the future holds, and I have no desire TO know.

I DO know that every morning that my children and I can wake up and face a new day, things are good. Every moment that we get to spend, breathing and living and laughing, things are great. And every opportunity that we are given to help others in whatever way possible to us at the time means that things are fantastic.

For me? That is getting busy living. It’s living my best life.
Pursuing my dreams, living in hope despite our realities, and making a positive difference and contribution in and to other people’s lives.   
And enjoying the simple things – laughter, a good book, cheesecake, coffee and rainy afternoons 😉

How do you ‘get busy living’?