Wisdom from Calvin and Hobbes

by Courtney Hollingsworth & Calvin and Hobbes


Change can be scary. It can be hard. It can be painful. It's risky. It's dangerous. Ignorance can be all of those things too. Neither option eliminates risk. You can choose to walk into the risk and embrace the scariness of it. Or you can choose to close your eyes, walk forward, and pretend it isn't scary at all. Ignorance isn't bliss. But don't take it from me, take it from Calvin and Hobbes:




Busy, Busy, Busy

by: Courtney Hollingsworth, PLPC


The 'Busy' Trap


Ringing with truth and clarity, when I came across this article in the New York Times about busyness I knew I wanted to share author Tim Kreider's ideas here with you. I agreed, resonated, and felt convicted by his look at how busyness is a trap we have created and accepted in our mainstream culture, that we then in turn create and accept in our lives. While I didn't necessarily nod along to every point he made in the article, his overall thesis that we perpetuate busy lives to create importance to our days and therefore significance to our lives, is one I see and feel all around me as well as in me.


"Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day."


Rather than view idleness as the enemy, or evidence of emptiness, he posits idleness as an important factor to fullness in life. "Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done." 

I often discover when sitting with people in the counseling room, allowing ourselves  space is a battle. Space time-wise, physically, and even mentally. The battle can be external in the pressures and requirements of the day, but often it is more internal. Allowing for some quiet inside ourselves, some space between the stimulus and the response, and some stillness to sort through, process, reflect upon that which is bouncing around inside of us. 

Here is a link to the article. I recommend taking a break from your busyness to read it ☺

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/the-busy-trap/?smid=pl-share

Feeling Better is Not Always Better

by Jonathan Hart, LPC

In order to experience life more richly and more fully, you must become a student of your own heart and mind.  Many of us walk through life working very hard to feel happy and to not feel sad.  It is a human instinct.  When we feel happy, we accept it as normal and good.  When we feel pain or sorrow, we try to avoid it, snuff it, or overcome it because on some level we believe that it is not normal and therefore it is bad. There is little examination of how joy or sorrow take shape in our own hearts.  This leads us to a blandness of experience that we find acceptable only because we have not tasted the richness that is possible.

Let me explain.  When we feel sadness, our first instinct is often to try to get happy.  It seems foolish to allow the sadness to stay.  If we can't "get happy", we wonder what is wrong with us... which leads to more sadness, and even to shame.  We try to anesthetize the pain with all kinds of things, from shopping to substances to adrenaline rushes.  Somehow the sadness flattens all of these eventually.  Our attempts to feel better are not what they cracked up to be.  We need something different, something more authentic.

What if, instead of running from the sadness we acknowledge it and not only allow it to stay, but poke at it, study it?  What if we learn what it is really about, how it works, why it is there?  This is not an attempt to make it better.  Rather it is an attempt to know it more fully, to give it room to exist.

"Why on earth would I do that?!" you might ask.  The answer is simple: sadness is normal.  If you have lost your job or a loved one, had a friend move away, had a car crash, or had a child move on to college, the sadness you feel is supposed to be there.  It is a normal emotional response to loss.  If you fight it, you will lose.

Rather than fighting it, I suggest making friends with it.  Observe and experience your feelings at the same time.  Get to know it.  Learn how it works in you.  Allow it to be present, and actually feel it for a change.

Do not only do this with sadness.  Do this with joy and contentment and peace as well.  Instead of just rolling past it, pause and examine it.  Feel it more fully.  Know why it is there and how it comes to be.  Pick apart why the joke was funny to you, explore the layers of irony or innuendo.

In short, become a student of your own heart.  Don't measure yourself against others' reactions or patterns: they are not you.  Be yourself, and be yourself more fully. Stop striving for the illusion of perpetual happiness, and strive to know the full range of human experience on a deeper level.

Fiction, Hollywood, and Real Relationship

by Jonathan Hart, LPC

SPOILER ALERT:  for those who haven't read the Harry Potter or Hunger Games series, there may be plot spoilers in the following paragraphs, though I will try hard not to reveal too much.

My wife and I were discussing some of our thoughts about how the books The Deathly Hallows and Mockingjay ended, and how they served to wrap up their respective series.  We were thoroughly disappointed in each and for similar reasons.  The core of our disappointment was the principle of "putting a bow on ugly".

The Harry Potter series ended with an epilogue titled "19 years later", that (we felt) too neatly and agreeably attempted to wrap up all the threads from the series.  The fact that Harry named a child after the person who most utterly despised him and treated him viciously even behind closed doors was just too much.  I can see coming to respect him, but one simply does not name a child after an abuser of this magnitude.  All the ugliness seemed to have inexplicably vanished.

The Hunger Games series tried to do the same thing, though the attempt at closure was somewhat better.  The author at least attempted to acknowledge that ugly existed in the post-story world, but it was still resolved too simplistically and without the flesh to make it believable for me.

Hollywood and fiction train us to expect that all the loose ends can be resolved, that resolution equals "happily ever after" or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof.  They train us to need things to work out that way.  This is most plainly true in the (despicable and utterly useless) genre known as "Romantic Comedy".  I cannot say more without using profanity.

Think of the sense of disappointment or unease when you watch a movie in which resolution is not clean or neat. We recently watched the movie Moneyball, which does not conclude with a "Hollywood Ending".  I can only say that the events depicted happened within the recent lifetimes of many, and as such could not be modified to fit the pattern described above.  I feel that if they were more ancient history they would likely have been changed into something completely victorious.

This is fine, and even necessary (to a degree) for celluloid.  The unfortunate side effect is that because reality is very much different, many people are left with a sense of disappointment and even despair when real life does not work that way.  The truth is that human beings are generally a broken, selfish lot that is capable of both great goodness and great evil, often within a single breath.

The fact is that intimacy, real relationship, and engaging responsibly with another human being is often like a wrestling match.  The very best relationship in the world experiences conflict and disagreement, hurt and offense, misunderstanding and tension on an ongoing basis.  The couple who tells you that "never a harsh word is spoken" is either whitewashing, outright lying, or they are not experiencing real, deep intimacy.

If you are going to really do deep, intimate relationship with another person, you'd better know how to fight.  I don't mean knowing how to eviscerate your opponent in the shortest period of time.  I mean knowing how to hold in tension the following two truths: 1. This other person and I are on the same side,  and 2. There is pain and friction between us.

When I talk about knowing how to fight, I mean knowing how to understand and express my own feelings and thoughts in a way that does not accuse or attack the other, even when it is plainly and wholly their fault.  I mean learning how to uphold their honor and dignity while feeling the painfully powerful desire to rip their eyes out.  I mean knowing how to view conflict as a necessary part of doing relationship, and not as a threat to relationship.

It is often one of the hardest lessons to learn in relationship that resolution is not about coming to agreement, but rather it is about coming to a deeper understanding of the other person, and thereby learning how to craft a unique relationship between the two of you.  No part of that process is clean, neat, or simple.  It is ugly, and to expect or demand otherwise only leads to disappointment.  You can put a bow on it if you like, but that doesn't make it easier to look at.  It takes patience, forgiveness, grace, mercy, and love.  When you've come to the other side of it, it will still be ugly, but there is a beauty in what has been created by moving through it that will last a lifetime.

What is Your Story? A Self Exploration Activity

by: Courtney Hollingsworth, PLPC 

Oftentimes it seems that whatever may lie in the past, we prefer to keep there. It seems so much simpler or safer or smarter to just pack up our past in a box and put it on a shelf in the storage room of our heart. It's in the past, so what does it matter? Many of us wrestle with this very question.

I like to think of each life as a story that is being lived out. Just as in the stories we enjoy in the pages of books, each of our lives is filled with highs, lows, joys, sorrows, disappointments, dashed dreams, dreams come true, pain, and love, just to name a few. In order to grasp the fullness of the main character's story in a book, we have to begin at the beginning. Picking up a novel and starting at Chapter 32 is going to not only rob us of the story’s depth, but would likely make for a confusing storyline. There is much to be gleaned from the parts of our lives we have already lived, as every step has gotten us to where we are today.

Below is an activity that can be helpful in beginning to search back into our life’s story to recapture the valuable pieces available to us there. Consider spending some time revisiting the previously aired episodes of your life. Ask someone, whether a trusted friend, mentor, or counselor, to begin this journey with you.

Activity:

Pick a milestone to write about using the chart below or divide your life up appropriately. Start with sentence: "This was a time in my life when...." and let the writing flow.

Use this outline:

1. Get a clean sheet of paper and date it.

2. Select the milestone that you wish to write about, and write it at the top of the paper.

3. Write down the five questions:

   a. Where was I living at this time in my life?

   b. Whom was I living with at this time in my life?

   c. What was important to me at this time in my life?

   d. What was I afraid of at this time in my life?

   e. Who were my friends at this time in my life?

4. Reflect for a moment on the milestone and the questions.

5. Begin to write, starting with the phrase "This was a time in my life when..."

Major Milestones:

0-10

11-20

20-30

30-40

40-50

50-60

70-80

Technological Food for Thought

By: Katy Martin, LPC


I'm sure that everyone, by this time, has heard that Steve Jobs, co-founder and former CEO of Apple, has passed away after a long battle with cancer.  The news has been everywhere: websites, newsfeeds, facebook, emails, tv, etc.

I find it ironic that I heard the news via my husband's AM radio as he listened to the Cardinals game, but that's beside the point.

To be honest, I knew nothing about him prior to this week.  Sure, I know he was a genius and that he was probably beyond rich.  I'm sad that it was in his passing that I learned so much more.

Steve Jobs really was a genius, a creative genius, who worked hard and claimed to be living his dream.  He had a family whom he talked about loving very much.  He was adopted as a baby, given a home.  He has had a huge impact on technology as we see it now.  His creations and innovations were his passion and truly exciting to him.  Media is painting the picture that he lived a full, rich life.


As I reflect on the impact this man's life and passing appear to have, I wonder what kind of impact we are all making.  Do you live with the same passion?  Do you find joy in life?  Are you accomplishing what you would like to accomplish?  Or are you just trying to survive each day and maybe looking forward to the next big thing?

I didn't personally know Steve Jobs, but I still can't help believe that he really did love life and made the most of his time here on earth.


The good news: every day is a new day.  We have the opportunity to create goals, fulfill dreams, and really love the people who are around us.  We can seek forgiveness, give forgiveness, and find emotional healing.


The best news: Jesus states in John 10:10 that He came to give us life and life to the FULL.  Do you believe this?  What would it look like to invite God into the struggle you have to find joy and fulfillment?  


What would it take for you to begin living a full life?  After all, today is a new day and tomorrow begins a new week.