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Lessons Learned from the Fish Slapping Dance

March 8, 2014 By Jennie Marlow Leave a Comment

Fish_Slapping_DanceHow we deal with life can look a lot like that hilarious old Monty Python sketch called, the “Fish Slapping Dance.” We can spend a lifetime dancing around our fears and issues, only playing at confronting them. Then every now and then, life pulls out a big uncertainty and gives us a good wallop.

Yes, we need to have a sense of humor about it! But more than that, in undergoing life’s surprises—when our assumptions about the future are challenged—there is so much to be gained by what we learn during the crisis.

Rahm Emanuel, Mayor of Chicago and President Obama’s former Chief of Staff, said something pretty interesting back in November of 2008. He said we should never let a crisis go to waste, that during a crisis, we are often more willing to do things we would never consider when things are going great.

This is a bit of a two-edged sword, I admit. Frightened people are usually the most likely to do something reactive and, frankly, stupid. On the other hand, a crisis can create an opening for necessary changes that can happily be put off when everything is going smoothly. Let’s face it: the so-called “good times” can make us complacent.

Like in the “Fish Slapping Dance,” we all have the luxury of dancing around big problems for a while, but it’s often not until they knock us silly that we are willing to admit that a transformation is required of us.

Originally posted in 2010

Filed Under: Life Tagged With: Awareness, Fear, Uncertainty

Inspiration from an Outcast Ancestor

February 8, 2014 By Jennie Marlow Leave a Comment

Pistol-Packin-MamaExtraordinary people come in very unexpected packages, and my Great Aunt May was no exception. She was the notorious black sheep of the family, known for cussing, smoking cigarettes, drinking whiskey and living down by the railroad tracks that ran through the small Midwestern mining town of Madrid, Iowa.

A photographer who was passing through on his way to Des Moines once approached her to model for a poster for the soon-to-be hit song, “Pistol Packin’ Mama” by Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters. We’re told she gave him a face-full and threw him out of the restaurant where she worked as a waitress.

I never knew my Aunt May. What I know of her comes from the stories my mother’s family handed down. I have always found it so intriguing that, even though the ones who tell the story are very attached to their own conventionality, her name is always spoken with a kind of grudging respect, verging on awe.

May Sullivan was sassy, funny and had an explosive temper that would rain hell-fire on anyone who crossed her. According to the family mythology, she didn’t give a “Tinker’s damn” (as my grandmother used to say) about what people thought of her.

I always wondered if that were really true. It’s not rocket science to figure out what it cost her to rebel against small-town, religious and social norms. And while the stories are hilarious, there is something so painful about the unspoken truth, that her rebellion against society was purchased, in large measure, with alcohol.

Still, I love to hear the stories. About the photographer. About the way she gave everyone hell. About how much the children in the family loved her and looked up to her (while their parents couldn’t help themselves but look down on her). She had little dignity, but she had fire and that rare quality of courage that allows one to break the human contract to live in fear of judgment of the tribe. Even though I never knew her, there is something about her I truly miss.

I miss her when I feel I’ve been too frank. I miss her when I feel I am just too damned unorthodox for some people’s taste. I miss her when I swear haphazardly and offend. I miss her when I wish I didn’t give a damn what other people think of me, when in fact, I do. I even miss her when I’ve had one too many glasses of wine and wish I’d had more discipline. And I just miss her willingness to live her life, flying in the face of society’s rules and expectations. These qualities will live on in my borrowed memories of her as inspiration to not take life so seriously and to enjoy a life lived outside what is normal and seemly.

 

This post was originally published in 2010.

Filed Under: Life Tagged With: Authenticity, Fear, Freedom

Are Your Goals Serving You?

June 3, 2013 By Jennie Marlow Leave a Comment

"Attachment to your goals does not allow the flexibility that living in present time demands."                         − Spotted Eagle

I ran across this quote the other day, and it really gave me pause. I'm realistic enough to know that objectives are necessary and that, without targets to drive a process, our endeavors tend to stagnate or go off track.

That said, goals are a tricky business. While they serve to focus our energy, what are we to do when striving to achieve our goals leads us to suffer? How do we know whether or not to keep going?

Human beings tend to create from a place of avoiding what we fear. When we have only the goal and the fear of not achieving it as our reason for staying the course, we must be willing to abandon our investment in the goal. We must then move with courage toward a new objective, one that is guided by essence, the feeling experience we intended the original goal to deliver. 

When a goal delivers suffering, there is an alterative to dogged attachment, and that is to refocus on whatever essence qualities are missing from the material results. Essence words I tend to focus on are: peace, freedom and sustainability. I ask myself, "Is the effort to achieve this goal destroying my peace of mind? Do I feel free to express myself authentically and act from a will that is free of fear? Given the sacrifices required, can I sustain the effort? Do I have the time, energy and resources to do what I set out to do?"

These three essences―peace, freedom and sustainability―are sure to provide me with a litmus test for whether or not to proceed. Because essence defines a trajectory and not a goal, focus on essence is what affords me the needed flexibility that living in present time very often demands.

Filed Under: Life, Money Tagged With: Essence, Fear, Goals, Intention

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